Why you might be better off not owning a car at the moment
Over the last few of weeks the UK has been hit with some of the most extreme weather we’ve had in a long time. The first week of February saw the heaviest snowfall we’ve seen for 18 years, causing hundreds of schools to close and leaving over 6 million people unable to get to work. Most public transport was disrupted or cancelled and roads were deemed unsafe due to the icy conditions.
The continuing bad weather is a real worry for drivers everywhere, with an increased risk of accidents on the icy roads as well as other problems caused by the extreme conditions. There have been a number of incidents of sudden heavy snowfall trapping drivers in their cars and causing them to have to be dug out, while in other parts of the country the melting snow has been replaced with heavy rains and severe flood warnings have been issued.
All this is bad news for car owners, not only because of the heightened risk of driving on the roads, but also because a damaged car is a costly business. With the recession, most people just wouldn’t be able to afford to splash out on a new car if something happened to theirs. And that’s the real problem with owning a car. It’s brilliant until something goes wrong, but then it can become really expensive. You might think it won’t apply to you, that you’re a careful driver who won’t get into that sort of situation. But as the last few weeks have proved, you can’t always help what happens, and you certainly can’t predict it.
The problem is that once you have bought a car it then becomes entirely your responsibility. Then the older the car gets the more likely it is to go wrong, especially in extreme weather conditions like those we have been experiencing, and the more money you’ll have to shell out when it does. And even when you get it fixed, it still won’t be worth half what you paid for it in the first place as a car only ever decreases its value over time.
The people who manage to avoid these worries are those who opt for a car contract hire deal instead of buying a car outright. It doesn’t mean the car’s not yours, it just means you pay for it in regular monthly instalments and often you get extra benefits thrown in like road tax and servicing costs. So if something did happen, you wouldn’t have to pay the whole bill yourself. And the best thing is that when the contract hire expires after a couple of years you can trade the car in for a new one, meaning you’ve always got the latest updated model. And as you’ll always have a new car, it’s less likely to break down in the first place as it won’t have had time to wear out!
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It’ll be interesting to see what effect the government’s new scrappage scheme has on the industry. It’s probably not going to make a lot of people go out and buy a car if they weren’t already planning to, but should definitely make it easier for those who were anyway.