Annual Car costs

gabriel959

BigMat wrote:

gabriel959 wrote:

Il Principe wrote:

gabriel959 wrote:

davmaggs wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

Not sold on the need for bases. Our seat is just secured with the seat belt and once you've pushed down on the seat and pulled in the slack like you are supposed to, it doesn't move. Thankfully we've never needed to test it in anger.

+1

The base models ending up using a seat permanently and so that car becomes less useful for other things. Maxi Cosi do baby seats that have the seat belt fed through them, no less secure than any other model.

I don't know how reliable Which! Magazine is for Baby seats but my understanding is that is not the case, those baby seats are less secure. If you care about security then you will get the ISOFIX version with the base, everything else is a compromise.

Sounds like a salesman did a number on you. Actually that reminds me, we were given a pack of stuff at the hospital, it was a poorly disguised marketing exercise. Should the NHS really be helping people market crap to new parents/parents to be?

May be, may be not. You can get a Which! Magazine membership trial for a quid and see for yourself the results. I am not saying Which is without bias, I am only saying the test horizontal and frontal crashes and you will be surprised to see some results for some car seats. At the end of the day it all comes down to the fact that there are some car seats which won't be as safe as others. I have also used other car seats (when on holiday) and ours is the one that "feels" the safest.

I never feel more neurotic than when I'm picking up a hired car seat. "You expect me to put my kid in that?"

Took our own the last time we flew to the States. Handy tip, if there is a Walmart near the airport its actually cheaper to go and buy a carseat than it is to hire one for longer than a week! They supply the sh**test of the sh*t.

Indeed, when I meant holiday I meant my parents in Spain. They have got a decent one but it is not as good as the one we have. It is ok though better than the junk you get from rent-a-car places.

When we have been on a real holiday I did actually do that, I bought one when we got there!

gabriel959

davmaggs wrote:

gabriel959 wrote:

I
May be, may be not. You can get a Which! Magazine membership trial for a quid and see for yourself the results. I am not saying Which is without bias, I am only saying the test horizontal and frontal crashes and you will be surprised to see some results for some car seats. At the end of the day it all comes down to the fact that there are some car seats which won't be as safe as others. I have also used other car seats (when on holiday) and ours is the one that "feels" the safest.

There's virtually no difference between any of the seats, they are just moulded plastic and some foam (what does that sound like?).
http://www.freakonomics.com/2005/07/09/more-evidence-on-car-seats-vs-seat-belts/

THe PDF doesn't work and I can't see any data.

I can see this though...

http://www.which.co.uk/baby-and-child/b ... car-seats/

Then check the results and see for yourself, for the sake of a couple of hundred quid I am not prepared to find out seeing as I will happily spend 2 grand on a bike.

veronese68

CubeMark wrote:

DrLex wrote:

I'm thinking pre-March 2006 Range Rover.

V8 Audi RS6. Zero depreciation now - how cool is that! :P

Nice car. But, aye karumba! £1200 for discs and pads. All 4 or just fronts? I realise they're big mofo's. Mind you, I seem to recall selling a set of Lambo pads that were £300 EACH!

CubeMark

Veronese68 wrote:

CubeMark wrote:

DrLex wrote:

I'm thinking pre-March 2006 Range Rover.

V8 Audi RS6. Zero depreciation now - how cool is that! :P

Nice car. But, aye karumba! £1200 for discs and pads. All 4 or just fronts? I realise they're big mofo's. Mind you, I seem to recall selling a set of Lambo pads that were £300 EACH!

That is ONE full set of discs and pads, but they actually cost me more than that as I had to replace the front discs and pads again within a few hundred miles (forgot to include that in the above figures)....

I normally follow a "brake-in" procedure [sic] which involves heat cycling the discs and pads by repeated hard braking, then letting them cool down. So I'm doing this on my usual low-traffic route, accelerating to 70 and braking hard to 10mph and repeat 10 times to get everything nice and hot. As I drive round the corner there's a set of road works with red traffic lights, so I had no option but to sit there with smoke coming off my brakes until the lights turn green again. It only took a hundred miles or so to realise that the front brakes were ruined with horrendous shuddering.
Cleaning the discs and putting a NEW set of pads on fixed the problem for a few hundred miles but the discs are toasted, so that's a set of front discs and two sets of pads ruined and an expensive lesson learned! :oops:

daviesee

CubeMark wrote:

As I drive round the corner there's a set of road works with red traffic lights, so I had no option but to sit there with smoke coming off my brakes until the lights turn green again.

When I was at a track day we were told to put our car in gear and leave the handbrakes off when off the track for this very reason.

bigmat

gabriel959 wrote:

davmaggs wrote:

gabriel959 wrote:

I
May be, may be not. You can get a Which! Magazine membership trial for a quid and see for yourself the results. I am not saying Which is without bias, I am only saying the test horizontal and frontal crashes and you will be surprised to see some results for some car seats. At the end of the day it all comes down to the fact that there are some car seats which won't be as safe as others. I have also used other car seats (when on holiday) and ours is the one that "feels" the safest.

There's virtually no difference between any of the seats, they are just moulded plastic and some foam (what does that sound like?).
http://www.freakonomics.com/2005/07/09/more-evidence-on-car-seats-vs-seat-belts/

THe PDF doesn't work and I can't see any data.

I can see this though...

http://www.which.co.uk/baby-and-child/b ... guides/how we-test-child-car-seats/

Then check the results and see for yourself, for the sake of a couple of hundred quid I am not prepared to find out seeing as I will happily spend 2 grand on a bike.

The freakonomics thing isn't about baby seats I don't think so pretty irrelevant. I haven't used a seat with a base for my toddler, its particular to babies. Each to their own anyway, I just the ineffectiveness of the majority of from birth child seats was worth highlighting.

CiB

daviesee wrote:

CubeMark wrote:

As I drive round the corner there's a set of road works with red traffic lights, so I had no option but to sit there with smoke coming off my brakes until the lights turn green again.

When I was at a track day we were told to put our car in gear and leave the handbrakes off when off the track for this very reason.

That's better. We've gone from baby seats to track day behaviour. Much better.

We came from hospital / Gran's house (depending on when & where we were born) held carefully in Old Mother CiB's arms in the front of a Ford Thames van, or in a cot in the back of a Land Rover. As we each got older we migrated to the steel cover over the engine between the seats in the van, where it was warmest. Safe? Sort of. We all survived it.

rhext

gabriel959 wrote:

davmaggs wrote:

gabriel959 wrote:

I
May be, may be not. You can get a Which! Magazine membership trial for a quid and see for yourself the results. I am not saying Which is without bias, I am only saying the test horizontal and frontal crashes and you will be surprised to see some results for some car seats. At the end of the day it all comes down to the fact that there are some car seats which won't be as safe as others. I have also used other car seats (when on holiday) and ours is the one that "feels" the safest.

There's virtually no difference between any of the seats, they are just moulded plastic and some foam (what does that sound like?).
http://www.freakonomics.com/2005/07/09/more-evidence-on-car-seats-vs-seat-belts/

THe PDF doesn't work and I can't see any data.

I can see this though...

http://www.which.co.uk/baby-and-child/b ... car-seats/

Then check the results and see for yourself, for the sake of a couple of hundred quid I am not prepared to find out seeing as I will happily spend 2 grand on a bike.

So the pdf refers to a study which analysed real accident data and came to the conclusion that using a car seat offered little or no protection above that offered by a standard seatbelt.

The Which 'study' uses video footage showing crash test dummies being flung around in disturbing ways and draws unsubstantiated conclusions about the injuries that might be incurred by a dummy sitting in the 'bad' seat vs the injuries that might be incurred by the dummy sitting in the 'good' seat. Withthe strong implication that you should subscribe to Which.

Quite apart from the false syllogism: 'in our artificial test, this dummy was flung around in a much more disturbing way than this dummy, therefore this seat will protect your real child much more in a real accident'; it seems to me that the Which test suffers from the usual problems associated with Which tests. They simply don't repeat them enough to draw any valid conclusions. If they really wanted to offer good quality advice, they'd be gathering and analysing data from real accidents (of which there are plenty), rather than carrying out these artificial and generally not statistically significant tests. But tests are what they do......

davmaggs

BigMat wrote:

The freakonomics thing isn't about baby seats I don't think so pretty irrelevant. I haven't used a seat with a base for my toddler, its particular to babies. Each to their own anyway, I just the ineffectiveness of the majority of from birth child seats was worth highlighting.

yes, it is:

"He found no difference in the death rates or incapacitating injuries for children in car seats versus children using adult seat belts. Like me, he found a slight advantage for car seats in preventing non-incapacitating injuries relative to adult seat belts (car seats offered a 10% improvement for these less serious injuries in both of our samples)."

Also seats with a base are used by toddlers. I know several people who have them, and they like them because they can rotate the seat to get said sprog in and out easier than my method of bashing their head against the car's ceiling when I forget they've grown taller.


edit; typo

rjsterry

davmaggs wrote:

BigMat wrote:

The freakonomics thing isn't about baby seats I don't think so pretty irrelevant. I haven't used a seat with a base for my toddler, its particular to babies. Each to their own anyway, I just the ineffectiveness of the majority of from birth child seats was worth highlighting.

yes, it is:

"He found no difference in the death rates or incapacitating injuries for children in car seats versus children using adult seat belts. Like me, he found a slight advantage for car seats in preventing non-incapacitating injuries relative to adult seat belts (car seats offered a 10% improvement for these less serious injuries in both of our samples)."

Also seats with a base are used by toddlers. I know several people who have them, and they like them because they can rotate the seat to get said sprog in and out easier than my method of bashing their head against the car's ceiling when I forget they've grown taller.


edit; typo

Children not babies. How on earth would you even put a baby in an adult seat belt? Even older children need a booster cushion of some sort to bring their shoulder up to the height of the belt.

bigmat

I'm visualing my newborn sat on the backseat with a seatbelt on. Would have been cute, as long as I could keep her propped up. Seriously, if that study purports to deal with babies then its a little bit suspect wouldn't you say?!

My point re using a seat with a base for toddlers isn't that they don't exist, rather that they don't offer the apparent safety benefits that you get with a newborn baby.

I also can see that Which? tests aren't the be all and end all, but its the best that I could find on a pretty important issue.

Initialised

Ditching our 2nd car saved us around £3k per year. Current car is probably around the £8k per year mark.

On the back of a conversation about this with Mrs ini I seem to have manged to justify an n+1

mostly harmless

Some of these figures seem quite high. Bought a 5 yr old Mondeo 5 years ago for £4k. Accepting it's worth ~£500 now and we've done getting on for 50k miles in it the cost are as follows

£6k petrol (£1200/yr)
£2k insurance (~£400/yr)
£2.5k MOT, tax mending things (£500.yr)
£3.5k depreciation

Which gives a five year average of £14k / 50k miles = 28p/mile which is a fairly good incentive to ride to work. 20 mile round trip = £5.60 saved and available to plough back into cycling.

richk

I did some figures several years ago & it worked out that running a car cost us around £165 a month. That will have gone up now. I dont do huge mileages (cycle to work, obviously) and buy cheaper cars & run them for several years so depreciation isnt so bad.

daviesee

's funny.
Us lot think nothing of spending thousands on a bike and the demograph appears that most have decent, if not high wages. The stereotype MAMIL is based on something.
Based on this you would think that there would be a higher than normal level of cars too yet according to this thread, most buy second hand bangers and run them into the ground.

Skewed posts or skewed stereotypes?

UndercoverElephant

daviesee wrote:

's funny.
Us lot think nothing of spending thousands on a bike and the demograph appears that most have decent, if not high wages. The stereotype MAMIL is based on something.
Based on this you would think that there would be a higher than normal level of cars too yet according to this thread, most buy second hand bangers and run them into the ground.

Skewed posts or skewed stereotypes?

Probably just prefer to spend our money on bikes - I resent every penny wasted on fuel.

My costs (wife's car) are about 2000 a year petrol, 300 a year insurance, 400 a year maintenance and tyres, 200 road tax. Oh and about 1000 a year depreciation. Nearly four grand a year - Jaysus, I should buy more expensive bike stuff.

BelgianBeerGeek

UndercoverElephant wrote:

daviesee wrote:

's funny.
Us lot think nothing of spending thousands on a bike and the demograph appears that most have decent, if not high wages. The stereotype MAMIL is based on something.
Based on this you would think that there would be a higher than normal level of cars too yet according to this thread, most buy second hand bangers and run them into the ground.

Skewed posts or skewed stereotypes?

Probably just prefer to spend our money on bikes - I resent every penny wasted on fuel.

My costs (wife's car) are about 2000 a year petrol, 300 a year insurance, 400 a year maintenance and tyres, 200 road tax. Oh and about 1000 a year depreciation. Nearly four grand a year - Jaysus, I should buy more expensive bike stuff.

Dammit, he's right. And I was hunting for bargains in Aldi yesterday!

bdave262000

We got rid of our car (2002 VW Passat) when I had to take a 20% pay cut. Our three kids were 6months, 20months and four at the time. We had no choice, it was either get rid of the car or default on the mortgage. Bought a bike for my wife, a trailgator, child bike seat and one of those cheapo bike trailors of ebay (£65) strapped the baby car seat into the trailor for the little one and hooked it and the babyseat to my bike and the Mrs had our son hooked up on the trailgator.

We managed like that for about two years, had some fantastic days out in Ricmond Park, Wimbledon Common and would pop over to Putney every weekend to see the grandparents. When they get older you have sports clubs, birthday parties etc so we bought a 2007 Vauxhall Zafira. Sits on the road most of the time, barely do 4,000 miles a year and costs about £350 a month to run and pay off the loan.

fossyant

Frightening some of the car ownership costs when you work it out !

DrLex

mostly harmless wrote:

Some of these figures seem quite high. Bought a 5 yr old Mondeo 5 years ago for £4k. Accepting it's worth ~£500 now and we've done getting on for 50k miles in it the cost are as follows

£6k petrol (£1200/yr)
£2k insurance (~£400/yr)
£2.5k MOT, tax mending things (£500.yr)
£3.5k depreciation

Which gives a five year average of £14k / 50k miles = 28p/mile which is a fairly good incentive to ride to work. 20 mile round trip = £5.60 saved and available to plough back into cycling.

Not that I want to discourage you from cycling, but insurance, M.O.T., servicing and almost all of the depreciation occurs whether the car is used or not; you're more likely saving petrol & wear & tear at around 18p a mile.

It pains me to keep two cars, but living in a rural location with two children at different schools in opposite directions 10 & 20 miles away, there's little practical option. Looking forward to the day that I can run just one.

veronese68

bdave262000 wrote:

We got rid of our car (2002 VW Passat) when I had to take a 20% pay cut. Our three kids were 6months, 20months and four at the time. We had no choice, it was either get rid of the car or default on the mortgage. Bought a bike for my wife, a trailgator, child bike seat and one of those cheapo bike trailors of ebay (£65) strapped the baby car seat into the trailor for the little one and hooked it and the babyseat to my bike and the Mrs had our son hooked up on the trailgator.

We managed like that for about two years, had some fantastic days out in Ricmond Park, Wimbledon Common and would pop over to Putney every weekend to see the grandparents. When they get older you have sports clubs, birthday parties etc so we bought a 2007 Vauxhall Zafira. Sits on the road most of the time, barely do 4,000 miles a year and costs about £350 a month to run and pay off the loan.

Proof that a car is a luxury and not absolutely essential.

CiB

Veronese68 wrote:

[We managed like that for about two years, had some fantastic days out in Ricmond Park, Wimbledon Common and would pop over to Putney every weekend to see the grandparents. When they get older you have sports clubs, birthday parties etc so we bought a 2007 Vauxhall Zafira. Sits on the road most of the time, barely do 4,000 miles a year and costs about £350 a month to run and pay off the loan.

Proof that a car is a luxury and not absolutely essential.[/quote]
Proof that you do need one more like. Once they get round to having any kind of social life and wanting to be involved in things like sports, after school activities, seeing friends etc it's almost impossible without a car. When there are two it's a virtual cert that everything's happening at the same time for them in different directions. Expecting a six year old to cycle 4 miles in the dark to a birthday party is a non-starter. In a class of 30 there are a lot of birthday parties to go to at that sort of age.

jonomc4

Two Cars.

Total Costs £110K (one is new (just bought) the other was bought about 3 years ago when 1.5 years old)
Insurance - £2,600
Petrol - £100 per week
VED £680
Servicing £1,000 ish

Devaluation - I don't even want to think about it!

Total waste of money and I do about 10 miles on my bike to every 1 in the car - except the very occasional long haul journey).

I think the funny thing is we are almost conditioned to spend on cars - where as with my bikes I really look for bargins saving a few pounds on a sale item or hunting for the best value on the internet.

daviesee

CiB wrote:

In a class of 30 there are a lot of birthday parties to go to at that sort of age.

29 to attend. 1 to hold.

UndercoverElephant

jonomc4 wrote:

I think the funny thing is we are almost conditioned to spend on cars - where as with my bikes I really look for bargins saving a few pounds on a sale item or hunting for the best value on the internet.

Well, yes and no. I just replaced the rear shocks on my wife's car, scoured the internet and got them from Germany - high-grade ones, really quite cheap. I still winced at the price - £90 for the pair! Then I realised that I'd have quite happily spent at least double that on new suspension parts for my mountain bike, that I don't really ride *very* often.

jonomc4

UndercoverElephant wrote:

jonomc4 wrote:

I think the funny thing is we are almost conditioned to spend on cars - where as with my bikes I really look for bargins saving a few pounds on a sale item or hunting for the best value on the internet.

Well, yes and no. I just replaced the rear shocks on my wife's car, scoured the internet and got them from Germany - high-grade ones, really quite cheap. I still winced at the price - £90 for the pair! Then I realised that I'd have quite happily spent at least double that on new suspension parts for my mountain bike, that I don't really ride *very* often.

My first two cars I rebuilt myself and spent many many hours under the bonnet - nowadays given that I am too old and lazy and also because you now need so many special tools and computers for each car type, I just drop in the dealer and collect them at the end of the day.

twist83

Car 1 - My Toy Audi S4 4.2 V8 Cost £6900 a year ago worth £6500 now

Insurance £797 for me and the missus
VED £405 (OUCH!)
MOT: £30
Servicing and Parts: £700
Fuel (I do not calculate this) however lucky to see 20mpg. I have done about 1500 miles this year in it

MASSIVE money for bugger all miles. Hence it is shortly finding a new home with my mate

Car 2

2008 BMW 120d

The other half uses this car for work as she is an estate agent. Cost us £10000 about 8 months ago

Insurance £380
VED £95 for the year
Servicing (No service due yet)
Repairs! £2300... Yep that is right. A cracked cylinder block between 2 cylinders. Just had a brand new engine fitted. Total bill was £7500 but the Warranty company footed the rest.
Fuel it does a solid 45-50 all the time. She gets mileage which more than cover our fuel usuage in the car so £0 on fuel.

twist83

jonomc4 wrote:

Two Cars.

Total Costs £110K (one is new (just bought) the other was bought about 3 years ago when 1.5 years old)
Insurance - £2,600
Petrol - £100 per week
VED £680
Servicing £1,000 ish

Devaluation - I don't even want to think about it!

Total waste of money and I do about 10 miles on my bike to every 1 in the car - except the very occasional long haul journey).

I think the funny thing is we are almost conditioned to spend on cars - where as with my bikes I really look for bargins saving a few pounds on a sale item or hunting for the best value on the internet.

Ohh what have you got Without a doubt if I had the money I would be buying something exotic!! Which it sounds like you may well have.

roger_merriman

cars are as pricey or as cheap as you want them to be.

my car cost £0 since it was a cheap too old to be any use! by said part of family. current value £300?
it's a 13 year old Fiesta

Tax £140
insurance £320
milage 5,500 which is about £800

MOT - and such £140.

I don't need to pay to park but do park in kingston from time to time etc, plus get fleased going over the bridge! maybe £100 in total?

works out at about £1500

Even with a wee rust bucket it does cost, But to do the lot via Bus or train is slow and pricy.

for both of us back to my folks it's 5hrs each way plus best part of £200 pounds

for my sister in laws it's 2hrs each way and £30 pound plus.

in both cases the car is half the time and a fair bit cheaper.

If you IP do move out of london (mind you what people mean by london is a moveable beast) public transport becomes less and less useful, plus if your moving out friends around that age or stage in ones life will be thinking about it as well.

Thats not to say you can't manage with out a car but as folks move further out it becomes darn useful.

team47b

Spent the last 6 years without a car, use bikes and trailers, trains and only bought a car when I was sure I really DIDN'T NEED one!

Now I don't RELY on it as my main form of transport, it's there as a hobby and a bit of fun, bit like the bikes.

It's 56 years old (the car not me) no road tax, serviced by me, does about 70mpg. MOT about £25 Insurance £200. Appreciating in value every year!

I think it's the feeling that having no choice but car ownership is the problem, and a bit like an addiction and can take a few years to get over, car cold turkey is the worst!