How can people afford cars?

buy cheap car, take trip, sell car, and it still end up being cheaper than train.

shut up Ed, inane comment^^ when considering the actuality of doing what you said.

Cars are easy. I don't know how people afford those big detached houses.

Even when I was in a full employment, I could get mortgage for a one bedroom flat only (including my wife's income I could maybe get a small ruined one bedroom house in the middle of the ghetto). There's 5 of us. Some houseowners of those big 4-5 bedroom properties around us in Wansted, Woodford and Chigwell are ordinary plumbers, electricians and cab drivers.

Those poor devils have ramped themselves up to the nines with mortgages/hp agreements just so they can keep up with the dick-dangling Joneses. ALL of these plumbers/electricians/cab drivers never actually see their big houses because they're busy working to pay for it all.

shut up Ed, inane comment^^ when considering the actuality of doing what you said.

£200 banger, drive up to the north of england, and drive back down, clean it up, polished, vaccumed, etc. and sold for £500.

How can people afford food is the question plaguing me tonight.

£200 banger, drive up to the north of england, and drive back down, clean it up, polished, vaccumed, etc. and sold for £500.

Insurance, £200 bangers can and frequently do break down, you were lucky.

Will, have some change.

I've always owned classic (or retro) cars and found them to be very economically sensible, so long as you don't buy an old Jag or something. Example - Hillman Avenger GT - bought for £900, insurance £75 a year on a classic car policy, and was tax exempt so road tax was free. Parts are dirt cheap. I did all my own repairs and servicing because it's so mechanically simple. Did 40mpg which wasn't great, but not bad either. It didn't break down once, and I was doing about 6,000 miles a year in it - in fact I lent it to family and friends when their modern cars were stuck at dealerships. Got paid £250 to have it featured in some advert. Sold for £1500.

£50 + cost of car + insurance +MOT + servicing.

that's the real cost and it's a lot and keeps on getting higher.

Apart form the cost of the car itself, the rest was cheaper than my last bicycle when I finally put it together :-)

hehe, im such a boring person really, but the main reason i sold my car was fuel cost, which has virtually doubled over the last 12 years and servicing and all that jazz. It' got on my nerves, having a car is like having to look after it all the time.
train is actually cheaper if you travel as infrequently as i do. And bike for everything under 50 miles is all good.

All good.
I've never needed the car (apart from the need for speed) as much, as when my wife become pregnant.
And now it's just a different story. I wish I could use it less.

how can people afford houses

my god that first house sounds OTT in the extreme

http://timesbusiness.typepad.com/money_weblog/2010/03/top-10-most-expensive-homes-in-the-world-.html

O.k, so you could easily have done it cheaper on train, with heaps of time either side. just checking, and yes, Im biased, and yes, a train geek.
(car hire is cheap as these days, have paid £40 a weekend before, its transumerism)

Including gettting too and from the station at either end?

hehe, im such a boring person really, but the main reason i sold my car was fuel cost, which has virtually doubled over the last 12 years and servicing and all that jazz. It' got on my nerves, having a car is like having to look after it all the time.
train is actually cheaper if you travel as infrequently as i do. And bike for everything under 50 miles is all good.

12 year doubling of fuel cost is a annual rate of increase of 5.7%, not that bad.

It will go up a lot more though as peak oil kicks in.

I had a meeting in Cardiff today.
I drove, on the way there I tucked the nose of the car under the bumper of an hgv.
As a result my 2.3 litre, 5 cylinder high pressure turbo petrol engine did 38.5 mpg for 145 miles- take that Hans Diesel!
On the way back I wanted to get home so went 40 mph faster than before.
Total result- 300 miles travelled, 30.8 mpg in total, approx £50 in fuel at today's prices.
I challenge anyone to do what I did today for the same cost with another form of transport.
Bear in mind you must arrive in a suit.

300miles in a day on a bike. Carry suit. Piece of piss.

Compare the cost of your car to the cost of my bike though.
You also forgot insurance, depreciation, tyres, oil, MOT, parking, blah blah..

Dylan went there already. I can't keep up any more.. I'm going back to work.

I'd hate to call anyone daft but surely the answer to how do people afford afford cars? and how do people afford houses? is simple.

They have more money than you.

I'd hate to call anyone daft but surely the answer to how do people afford afford cars? and how do people afford houses? is simple.

They are more in debt than you.

Fixed.

@ dov

They have more luck / richer parents / than you.

On a slight tangent, anyone catch the Requiem for Detroit documentary over the weekend (should be on iPlayer), superb stuff.

buy cheap car, take trip, sell car, and it still end up being cheaper than train.

shut up Ed, inane comment^^ when considering the actuality of doing what you said.

In fairness to Ed, I hitchhiked to Newcastle with two women who had done just this - they needed to get to a flight to Poland, so they bought an ancient Rover at an auction the day before, insured it and drove down. They were even up for giving it to me, so I could drive the rest of the way home.

In fairness to *m.f, though, the car broke down a few miles outside of Newcastle and all three of us ended up hitching.

Ok, lets have a look at replicating my day using public transport.

To make it fairer I'll omit giving my girlfriend a lift to work, and stopping to have lunch next to a field because it was sunny.

So- meeting is at 1pm, lets work out how to get there:

07.25 I walk to the bus stop at Friern Road, get on the 63.

At Elephant I get on the Bakerloo line and take that to Paddington.

I then grab a coffee and jump on the train, arriving in Cardiff with one change at Bristol Temple Meads.

It's 11.43 so I can grab some lunch and stroll to the Industrial estate where the client has their office.

Meeting over- it's twenty past two, next train is 14.55, which if I grab a taxi I can make.

This gets me back into Paddington at 17.06 where I retrace my earlier route to East Dulwich.

I've spent £7.20 on a travelcard, £183 on my train ticket, and £9 on the cab from the clients office to Cardiff Central Station.

I left the house at just past seven and got back at half six, for a total cost of £199.20.

In comparison I actually got in the car at twenty past eight, gave my girlfriend a lift to work, and got home at half five, having spent £50.

In my view driving won that match.

O.k, so you could easily have done it cheaper on train, with heaps of time either side. just checking, and yes, I'm biased, and yes, a train geek.
(car hire is cheap as these days, have paid £40 a weekend before, its transumerism)

Easily is never true with the train, I like traveling long distance by train but it is never easy to make it cheaper, unless you're booking weeks in advance.

I'd hate to call anyone daft but surely the answer to how do people afford afford cars? and how do people afford houses? is simple.

They have more money than you.

@ dov

They have more luck / richer parents / than you.

They work harder and take better advantage of opportunities that present themselves than you do?

Or you can read the "investment" thread....

They work harder and take better advantage of opportunities that present themselves than you do?

Or they're just a little bit older than you? I'm 40 and I bought my first house for £40k in 1996 - worth maybe £170k now. I've never earned that much or been given any great amount, I just rode the government-engineered house price boom upwards. If house prices back then were what they are now, I'd probably never get to own a house.
On cars - I've found that however old or new a car is, they always seem to cost me about £1000 a year between depreciation and maintenance. Newer cars depreciate more but need less maintenance; older ones the other way around. Always seems to add up to about a grand, for some reason.

£200 banger, drive up to the north of england, and drive back down, clean it up, polished, vaccumed, etc. and sold for £500.

I reckon theres money in this...