An alarming car key thought.
30 Oct 2018
Dear LPG,
When a friend of mine retired, he decided that if he added his pension lump sum to his bank account it would just disappear so he made a decision to buy the car that he always wanted. He said that he would always be able to see exactly what he had done with the money. I don’t know much about cars, but his purchase still looks magnificent and makes him really feel happy.
I have to say that I am all for spending some of your retirement pot on something that will always bring back memories of what we worked for at a time when we are old enough to really appreciate it, and before that opportunity passes us by, but I feel privileged to have a much older four-wheeled vehicle that goes and just about struggles through that yearly test.
Just five and a half years later there was a problem with the car key and the lock had to be changed, but the thing cost him the best part of £5000.00. He was also telling me that because of the ever more-complicated computerised electronic checking system that most new cars have these days, just finding out what is wrong could mean a trip to the garage so that they can use their computer to identify the meaning of a flashing sensor light on the dashboard; another service that has to be paid for. This left me wondering if a new car is more of a liability.
I read your post-dated 14th September this year (►►►) which got me thinking about how much newer cars cost to maintain in spite of the fact that you don’t have to pay out for an MOT for the first three years; and while my relatively newly retired friend can afford it, what of all the youngsters who are balancing work, maintaining families and paying out the couple of hundred pounds a month to look the part when they go out for a spin? Buying a new car with financial help to me looks like taking out another mortgage and I have no doubt that more kids have car loans than house loans these days.
I have come to the conclusion that life gets more complicated every year and I am glad that I am not young now!
UF. Welling
Just in case you are vaguely interested LPG found a website which lists the average cost of today’s smaller cars, the AA’s car loan website so that readers can get a really rough idea of the cost of buying a new car. We have also added a little information about that electronic box that UF was talking about.
