Are you frugal in everyday life: perspective?

Wow! I highly doubt I'll spend that much cumulatively on cars in my lifetime!
But each to their own.

 

I've spent that much on repairs and insurance!!!

 

I wouldn't be surprised if I didn't ever surpass that total by much if I counted all car related expenses (insurance, repairs, servicing, rego, petrol, etc) on top of the capital cost of the cars.
But for me, a car is simply something to get you and goods from A to B. I drive a 2002 Honda Jazz and my wife drives our "fancy car" a 2014 i30.

As long as you can justify the amount of money you're spending on something, it's all good, you don't have to justify it to others (besides your wife!).

 

Don't have the 3 Fs and you will be fine in life.
If it floats, flies, and fast, you will definitely lose money.

Gotta live a little once in a while. Who knows when the covid virus will take you away for good.

 

Paraphrasing Peter Thornhill - "Rent that experience. Don't own it."

 

I can't say I live frugally. I can't say that I'm a big spender either. With 2 growing teenage kids, necessary money have to be spent.

 

Well that's the irony. If you drive a very out of date car, some people end up spending much more than they think on repairs, than a new car.

 

I think that's a common misconception.
Your insurance and potentially your rego will be cheaper on an older car than a newer car.

With my 18 year old car, I've made the conscious decision to stop all time based maintenance. I haven't had an oil change in at least 5 years for example. Plus, if you're the tiniest bit handy, you can do a lot of things on older cars yourself. I wouldn't know if it's more difficult on newer cars or not, but to me there would be a mental barrier to do this.
For example, I needed a new wheel bearing and I ordered a new one for an unbelievable $25.79 including postage off ebay. Plus it only took me an hour to do and if I had to do it again, I'd be substantially quicker than that.

 

i think it depends on the type/brand of car

buy a corolla/civic, you wont need any unreliable repairs for 10-15 years,
buy an alfa, and you're probably in the repair shop before you even take delivery
buy a entry level bmw/merc and once its out of warranty expect major repairs

 

Yea ok I remember my parents were spending like $7-10k pa on their 17 year old car. They ended up selling it for $500 in the 17th year haha.

 

If you buy a Japanese or Korean car, that's unlikely to be the case though.
I accept that old cars can be expensive to maintain, I just strongly reject the argument that they have to be.

 

my parents have had a civic, civic, corolla, jazz, corolla, their entire lives, each car held for 10-15 years, and I dont believe they have actually repaired anything that wasnt wear and tear,
no nasty surprises, no unexpected repairs

but they do service their car regularly, and it could just be pot luck as well

 

Maybe Japanese/Korean cars are actually better than German cars after all.

 

I bought a Japanese made car 2 years ago for 16k driveaway brand new, now you cannot buy the same car for under 19k, did I make money on cars ? hang on I actually bought two of them.
It has plenty of room inside, stable on the freeway, doing "REAL" 6 litres / 100 km in the city, and about 5 to 5.5 litre / 100km on freeway.

How's that ?

 

We usually buy our cars & keep them for 10+ years. Have had mainly Toyota's, and run them until they start to cost us money. They rarely get serviced, and they rarely need repairs. I'm tossing up whether I should get rid of my current 18yr old car. Mind you, mine doesn't get driven as much as Hubby's car, and it's only got around 120k on the clock.

 

My mechanic is an evangelist for the Toyota brand. His mantra ‘Brakes and tyres, brakes and tyres‘. Apparently not much else goes wrong

 

Wait! You don't service your cars??

I forgot about servicing my jp car for about 3 to 4 years and 20k kms into a random mechanic and he ripped into me about how irresponsible I was, apparently the oil was like peanut butter,
Still ran like a dream

 

Nope! If doing a long drive, like to Melbourne, we'll get the oil changed.