ditchmyster

iTrader: (7)

I'll admit I wasn't the best at school, I'm more of a doer than a theorist, still managed to get decent enough grades though and to be fair it wasn't the best school, and I aint doing too bad what with quiting working for a living at the ripe old age of 42, it's all about priorities.

zip106

Well, from the view out of my **** - and it's a bit difficult to see due to the wooden handle pressing on my prostate - I actually agree with this.

(And for the record, I've openly stated before that the M3 is leased.)

I'm shallow?
Brilliant.
Just brilliant

ditchmyster

iTrader: (7)

Personally I like to buy my cars outright but the most expensive one I own cost £4k.

I'm not interested in fancy modern cars as you guys know, mostly because I had some very nice company cars for well over 20yrs, admittedly not quite up to the standard of some of the metal being discussed on here but new at the time non the less, also working within the motor trade tends to de-sensitise you somewhat and I got a bit sick of cars TBH.

These days I just want something that performs the function that is required of it, and can put a smile on my face from time to time, cars aren't a priority for me, more a necessity but I'm still a petrolhead / adrenalin junky who's first choice would be a horse then a motorbike, after that it's a fast boat and last but not least a car, since my finances are directed elsewhere at the moment I'm left with getting my fix from my car, which is how I ended up with the cheapest car that could fulfil my current requirements.

Finance be that loans, mortgage, pcp, leasing has it's merits as does buying out-right if used wisely they are all assets to be exploited, why one would want to tie up huge sums of capital in a depreciating asset is beyond me but some feel more comfortable doing things that way, which is fine by me as it's not my money.

Matteeboy

Fine with no kids, a dog and/or occasional bike/surfboard transportation.
We even got a wooden cot in the BM.

I'd love a 997 but right now, it's not practical.

Ditchy; well we now have a fairly new, pricey car and on older "beater" so I can see the benefit of both.

Having £75k of vehicles on the drive, all paid for, did give me the wobbles a bit. It's now half that.

The van actually lost very little and was a hoot. You don't get that in a £5k rust box van conversion.

ditchmyster

iTrader: (7)

Contradiction, and yeah you do, it's all about perception.

My £3k 4x4 Mazda bongo did everything your Vdub did, just a bit slower.

Matteeboy

No it didn't; out mates have one and needed a proper tent as well to live in when we met in Galicia; we were happily free camping, they had to stay at a nearby campsite.
No proper cooking facilities, no proper camper heater, no sink, tiny bed and so on.

ditchmyster

iTrader: (7)

Mine had an electric flip top like yours with a bed up top and the seats down folded into a bed too, sleeps 4 no problem, granted I cooked on a twin hob and grill camping stove under one of the awnings but that's no great shakes as no cooking smells got into the van seats/interior with the side door closed, which I prefer personally, second awning on the back had a porta potty and pump shower, camping in luxury.

Oh and @ the heater mine had dual zone night heater and a leisure battery, as for the sink what's wrong with a bowl and 2x 30l water containers with taps and a 20l pump shower.

All I can think is your mates are camping novices, stupid or both.

I even have a portable barby / fire for mi marshmellows and sausages or fresh fish.

Carnut

Some one else made the point of putting more money into a bigger mortgage first, to which my point was in response to, keep up.

So what has my bank have to do with it, are you saying most people that drive round in a 30k car also have similar money in the bank?
I assume maybe thats what you may of meant, you wouldn't actually be saying most in the UK have 30k in the bank.

thenewgalaxy

Beautiful part of Spain, that.

Went to La Coruna and surrounding areas a few years back, want to go back sometime.

Carnut

No no no, thats the point, i can't speak for Mattee but I am just generalising, you keep making it about you. I would have thought that you are the exception, a nice low Mortgage and plenty of money in the bank with no kids, brilliant, but not the average person, if you were, the financial situation of the UK would be much better.

Carnut

The other side of the coin was pcp was the way because you could invest the cash instead of it being sat there in the bank.
Now you're saying get pcp AND just keep the cash in the bankwell Shaun and devil justification of pcp was investment of the cash elsewhere outweighed the down sides of pcp.

But great, if pcp can be had at a price that matches a cash deal over a 2/3/4 year deal and you can keep the cash that's the best of both worlds.

I would also like to add, I don't buy new cars anywho, I have, but not anymore. I start with a 2k (or what ever) car, then save and sell car then buy new car for x amount and so on. I personally would have got for example a 30k M3 instead of a new (ish) M135i.

Matteeboy

We were blown away by it and ended up spending almost three weeks there!

hodgy0_2

if you want to generalise then fine

In general there is nothing wrong with debt/finance, without it our economy would simply stagnate,

a good example of this is Japan - the economy has simply stagnated for the last 25 years, why, well in part because everyone simply saves their money and does not spend it

capitalism demands economic activity

Matteeboy

In which case, capitalism is broken.

hodgy0_2

sure maybe we are hitting the inherent contradictions in capitalism

Devildog

Matt, you said

"However anyone who buys a car in cash clearly CAN finance/lease it if they want; but they don't. So this "I could have bought it for cash" nonsense is just chest puffing BS"

Which clearly indicates that you think we are all lying.

You then said:

"A two year lease on my car is roughly simiar to depreciation (a bit more usually); at the end of that, you have nothing. I still have a £20k car. I prefer that. So so many others. We're not all thick though"

Yes you do indeed still have a £20k car. But I have significantly more than nothing - I have £20k in the bank, and thats the fundimental point you appear to be missing here. Because I've only funded the depreciation (plus a little bit of interest), not the whole car.

Further from you was this (apologies, I can't get the quote to work when I click the quote button)

"What riles me is when someone proclaims that buying a car for cash is madness and the money could be used elsewhere; like they are some financial genius. So if you ask these clever people where they have invested their £30k (for example) they almost always don't actually have it. So why comment? What's wrong with just saying £30k is a bit much but this finance/lease deal is affordable so I've gone for it"

I don't think anyone has said its madness? I've not, Shaun's not and I don't see anyone else calling you mad?

No one is saying they are financial genius' either. It is, however, perfectly sensible to earn more from your capital than you may pay in interest.

And sometimes its nice just to have the money in the bank - for a rainy day, so to speak.

We're about to pick up a new car. This time it is, to use your words, "a bit much" as I don't have anywhere near enough cash in the bank to buy it outright whether I wanted to or not (having spent a fortune last year on getting married). Part exing an owned car plus the equity we got from selling the pcp'd one covers the deposit and I can happily cover the monthly payments from income or I wouldn't have done it. I'd have gone for something cheaper.

What's wrong with being able to drive what you can afford to buy/lease/pcp/hp/finance by other means?

Devildog

Ahh - quotes working again? Maybe its a setting Matt has so he doesn't get caught out on the edits

Chris - I didn't "justify" PCP on the basis that investment outweighed the interest charges (although that's a perfectly valid justification) I justified it in my case on the basis that it wasn't materially more expensive and didn't tie up the cash in something that may not be that easily disposed of (for the right price), leaving that cash available for anything else you wanted to do with it.

Matteeboy

Right lets put this simply shall we?
My saving earn me about 2% a year (it was a lot more)
A car loan/PCP is at least 4%.
So you "pay" 2% more for the pleasure of having a loan. You also have very little flexibility, are mileage restricted and so on.

It STILL doesn't make sense.

This investing it elsewhere nonsense; WHERE exactly? And you're still paying interest; I'm not.

hodgy0_2

you could pay down other more expensive debt

you could invest it in a business (if you have one)

you could use the money to build an home extension / loft conversion - increasing your asset value, and potentially reducing your LTV

Matteeboy

As above.

Interest is very small on savings but it still adds up - even with our savagely rubbish interest rates, but my ISAs still accrued not far off a grand in the last year. The wife's the same again.

Compare that to a mate I drink with who has owned his house for seven years, done loads of work to it and had it valued last month - at the same value he bought it for.
And another mate who spent every weekend for a year (or more - we didn't see him) slaving on his Bristol terraced house. £40k spent, total gain in value? Nothing.

Yes there are many tales of making money too and that's the clear trend BUT it doesn't always work that way. My folks have made big gains and some fairly bad losses on property. At near retirement age, they do live in a nice house but it's still mortgaged up - I have no idea what they'll do when they retire.

So sorry if I don't fall to the ground, kicking and screaming at my total incompetence with money but if I spent a large amount of time, effort and money on a house and made sod all, I'd be annoyed. As it is, we make a bit of money for doing sweet FA and one day, we'll buy a house to LIVE IN not at some green eyed "asset" - it'll be a home. For us and the kids. Not a bloody reason to tell the World I've "added £10 grand to the house by tiling a wall."

I also won't live in fear of an interest rate rise (in fact I WANT one), will never have negative equity and will use the business to make our money. Simple. Like me.

Back to the M135i - had a superb blast on Saturday. The roads had really dried out for once and I got the pulse rocketing, firing the thing along country roads, overtaking multiple cars at a time when needed.
It's very hard to beat RWD balance, a screaming six pot engine, the most advanced auto box rifling through the ratios and all packaged inside a little hatchback shape.

Awesome. And it's ALL MINE

zip106

A sensible post at last.
Which is what I was trying to say when I got accused of showing off.

Anyway, Matt - I'll apologise for some of my choice of words yesterday - I was in a particularly grumpy mood.

pflowers

I thought you have just had to sell your camper and buy a cheaper car to raise cash to invest in your business?

Matteeboy

It's not to invest in business. It's something else.

We didn't have to sell it, we just thought it was time. We'd had three fun years but it was bloody unreliable and we thought it was time to move on. It was also a bit of a worry.

All speculative for now but it means if this plan works out, we can jump on it immediately. It's property related and somehow I'm actually really excited about it. Most odd.

Zip - cheers for that. I was rather ar5ey too and felt bad; apologies from down in Cornwall too.

Devildog

Matt.

It still doesn't make sense to you

Everything else you state/question (again) has been answered (at length) earlier in this thread.

But I'll make it simple (as you seem to like simple )

You pay interest (unless you're on an interest free deal - and they do exist) for the flexibility of NOT having your capital tied up in a depreciating asset that you may, or may not, be able to convert to cash at the price you want or in the timescale you need. Personally, that made perfect sense to me.

You could, if you wished (as I did in my case) leave that capital in the bank to have it instantly available should you need it. Alternatively you could invest it in any number of long or short term investments from property to the stock market and everything in between, at various rates of return based on your propensity for risk. Its only "nonsence" to you becasue you don't understand it. That might well be your engineering background. Not everone is as comfortable in the financial sector - I understand that.

I knew I had some large capital outlays coming up and didn't want to have to dick around having to sell or subsequnetly finance the car to free up the capital. I could have got a bank loan for those, but car finance rates are often better and in fact were at the time.

You really need to accept that just because you don't understand something its not automatically "nonsence" or "stupid". Or that it doesn't "make sense"

ditchmyster

iTrader: (7)

Matt.

Just out of curiosity and if you don't mind me asking, How much did you lose on the van?

Matteeboy

Oh I do understand it.

I also understand the chest puffing "I need the capital to invest elsewhere" line - it actually usually means "I wanted a £30k car but don't have £30k so I'll rent/finance it and pretend I actually have endless cash reserves sitting around doing nothing."

One thing engineers are very good at is maths. So thanks for the rather bizarre question on my intelligence but I am perfectly able to work out simple sums (and these ARE simple); it's easy to understand why anyone in finance is regarded so badly when they use the old patronisation technique at any opportunity when in a bit of a muddle.

"Free up capital" makes me laugh too. Oh I'm sure you're a hyper astute City investor rivalling Warran Buffet but really what you mean is "the missus demanded another bloody extension so I had to build it to keep her quiet."

I can see through all the waffle, the chest puffing, the illusions cast by many. And you do try your utmost to appear to be some kind of almost Bond-esque villain sat in your lair, controlling everything.

Really you just check the stocks and share pages in the papers once in a while and listen to Radio 4.

Ditchy - not very much thanks. Oh and I do mind you asking.

ditchmyster

iTrader: (7)

didn't think you'd answer. Although I don't get why you won't say because campers and VW's for some strange reason seem to hold their money well, I guess it's people that have never owned one thinking they are bullet proof, Older ones like my T4 were but my experience of the newer stuff wasn't good. I had a Passat with tiptronic or whatever they call it and the bloody thing cost me £2k in 6 months, fortunately I got it very cheap at auction so didn't lose anything on it, got rid sharpish though and won't buy another, I still get offered more than I paid for the T4 on a regular basis though.

john banks

It might mean all that you say Matteeboy, but it seems somewhat judgemental and obnoxious to assume that, even if it is an antidote to what had become an excessive credit culture.

If you are making better decisions that those you criticise, why not be happy in those decisions rather than push them onto others?

I don't like RWD (or even a significant RWD bias) in a powerful road car (took my GTR out yesterday and it was a skittish piece of crap), in the long run I believe in property ownership as the dice are loaded in that direction, I don't think doctors are milking the NHS and I like to use a bit of debt to secure the option to get out the NHS as early as possible. I respect that you differ on some of these things, but I can live with that. You seem not to like people not liking what you like?

Matteeboy

It lost very little despite be bloody unreliable.
I had a chap contact me about selling his (to ask for advice) - even higher spec than ours but higher mileage; he'd been offered less than us and had had a HUGE amount of issues.
VW can't build cars or vans properly any more.

It was brilliant but the issues we had did rather spoil things.

ditchmyster

iTrader: (7)

Just had a quick scout on AutoTrader and at a guess I'd say you lost around £15k based on what others are being sold at, assuming my memory is serving me well and you paid £45k for it, £5k a year isn't that bad really.