Tuesday, May 23, 2006 - 11:47 pm, by: Callum Finch(Sigeneat)
Disclaimer: The following post/thread isnt my having a whinge. Nor am i trying to 'boast' that i have spent so much. I just find it interesting.
I was gathering up receipts and invoices relating to my car tonight, trying to get ready for tax time.
Anyway.. i noticed that there were a couple of largish bills ($700, $1200.. etc) so i decided to sum it all up.
The results... Well, in the last 8months (how long i have owned my car) i have kept receipts for $10,000 worth (actually, $9983.46) of goods and services to my car. This includes road registration, insurance, fuel ($2500ish), repairs, servicing, tyres and so on. There would be a couple hundred worth of fuel receipts i have lost or never had, so thats my margin of error i guess.
$10grand. $10grand in 8months. (So thats why i have been living on bread and water for the last 10weeks!)
Including buying the car, stamp duty and other things i have been doing with it (Drags etc) i have spent close to $30,000 all up. Granted, half of that is all tied up in a loan that i hope to have paid off before im 91, but its still living beyond my current means.
I guess the only solice i can take is that all the repairs i have had to done are quite major and shouldnt need doing for another bunch of years.
How about everyone else? I hope i'm not the only one with a black hole in my garage..
Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - 12:54 am, by: Benny Gammelmark(Oldfield)
I haven't actually kept tag on it since I stopped using Lexus for service but while that was happening my average yearly spendings were: Fuel $1500 Tyres $1400 Service $1500 Insurance $2800 (that includes CTP) Registration $500 (or there abouts)
Total: $7700
Total cost over the 6 1/2 years I've had it: Ongoing: $7700 * 6.5 = $50,050 - let's say $50K Purchase: $79,000 (than includes stamp duty) Stereo: $25,000 (all up, including blown amps, etc) Exhaust,chip, etc approx: $7,000 New shocks: $4,000
In total approximately $165,000 / 6.5 = $25K per year.
Service and insurance costs have now gone down a bit so I expect to spend about $7K per year from now on. ..... and then there's always the extra bits that makes it nice .... maybe I should make it manual
Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - 01:04 am, by: Paul Brockbank(Brockas)
Callum, since the start of the year I've spent $7278.
Thats NOT including petrol, insurance, or registration.
Since I bought the car 2 years ago - ~$13,000 in modifications alone, not including any servicing or repairs.
I know I wont get any of that back, but as an 18 year old my car is the only motivation I have to save money. If I didn't spend it on my car, I would be getting hammered every weekend, at least I've got something to show for the money I've spent...
Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - 06:28 am, by: Ollie Ernst(Oli_g)
This is exactly why we recently sold one of our two Soarers. Absolutely nothing wrong with the car, but it wasn't necessary, or even financially viable, to support two cars.
Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - 07:18 am, by: Ian Johnston(Ted)
I always thought my Soarer had cost me bugger all, but when you add up things, it is an eye opener. I have had mine 18 months, and I added up some stuff I could remember, and I have spent around $4,500 in that time on regos etc, upgrades, suspension bushes, stereo, wheels and tyres, and other small things. And thats not counting fuel!! Any car is going to cost to run, as they say, around $130 a week for your average Commy/Falc. So our pleasure is not cheap, but wouldnt swap it for anything.
Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - 07:35 am, by: Matthew Sharpe(Madmatt)
Lots of hobbies are expensive - we've spent about $8000 on diving in the last 18 months. If your car is your hobby (i.e, you are racing it etc) then there are plenty more expensive ones you could have...
Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - 08:20 am, by: Luke Nieuwhof(Luke_nieuwhof)
I sometimes shudder at the cost of things being done to my car, but then again it is a lifestyle. I get to meet great people through this forum, take part in cruises, have an active interest in the car scene and drag race. Some guys spend thousands on golf clubs, we spend thousands on Soarers. Though I'm sure many of you do both!
Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - 09:25 am, by: David Vaughan(Davidv)
I have had my car seventeen months. It cost $20,000 to buy and recently, on request from someone planning to buy a Soarer, I added up what I had spent on it which was not too hard because most of it sits in the company accounts. To get a real cost, I divided the expenditure (excluding rego, insurance and petrol) into five categories, as follows: $1,770 on Essential repairs and maintenance. $4,450 on Nice to have; non-critical maintenance that really improved the car $2,900 on Performance improvements (exhaust, chip and tyres) $550 on Not Needed i.e. unnecessary repair (battery, A/C) $11,400 on More Money Than Sense i.e. hobby expenditure (half of which was the manual conversion) or $21,000 in all. You can see from the breakdown that the car itself does not cost a lot to run whereas hobbies always cost quite a bit and you would (or should) not spend it if you were not having fun.
If I were borrowing, I would want to keep a tight rein on my hobby until I could fund it outright.
As you can see,hardly anything has gone wrong with mine yet (hopefully it stays that way) so yeah, I'm quite happy with what it cost me so far. No proper mods as yet till I sort out my private matters first. I wouldn't complain if she cost me more though, I love her no matter what
And then when I sell it I just lost $150 on the sale.
So total cost = $3544.
This is the only reason why I can afford to spend money on my 1jz powered Corona. Actually done pretty well on the Corona this year as there haven’t been that many purchases. The year before I was spending at least $150 per week on modifications along (no fuel, rego, insurance etc).
Someone once said that you should drive the crappiest car that your pride will allow you (as they all lose money). This is why I keep on buying cheap old Toyotas that keep on going forever Sure I don’t get the thrill of driving a nice/fast car on the road that often but on the positive side the police NEVER look at you in an old crappy car and don’t get defects, speeding fines etc. E.g. on the police thing is that when I had my old ke70 that was about 50% rust in the rear I reckon, I was stopped next to some cops at the lights. At the time, my gearbox was dying and it was making some very strange noises also. Lights go green, they take off. 2 minutes later I see them on the side of the road with some dude in a riced up Honda getting reamed. At that point in time, I was very glad to be driving my crappy car
Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - 12:10 pm, by: Shane Ilich(Ferret)
hmmm....I've had mine coming up on 2 years now.
purchase of car - $11500 stamp duty - $300ish insurance - $1600 per year **this has since paid for itself in some respects crash repairs - $4300 *covered by insurance FMIC, pod filter, 3" dump pipe and exhaust - $400ish *also covered by insurance leftover cash, done by myself & a mate 17" Rims - $800 (2nd hand; including rubber) Radiator repair - $300ish Stage 1.5 Shift Kit - $450 Single turbo conversion and manual conversion - $6500ish (done together, majority of labour done by myself and a mate, including fuel pump, fuel controller, boost controller, other odds and ends, and purchase of some tools) Fuel - $50 week x 100 weeks = $5000ish Service costs (oil, brake pads, fluids, etc) - $400ish year x 2 years = $800
I've since sold off things like my old turbos, auto box, shift kit, diff, etc which has helped recoup sme of the costs of the conversions, but I havent kept a track of those sales.
Way I look at it, I've got a manual, single turbo soarer, looking at roughly 380-400rwhp, which has cost me about $20k (including buying it and then the conversions). For similar money I could have been driving around in a late 90's/early 00 commodore, or maybe a newish camry or something. I would still spend roughly the same money on servicing (assuming no warranty), and fuel - well, its the price I pay for to be happy with what I drive. I dont smoke, and I dont drink much any more, so I can justify an extra 10 bucks a week on fuel as my vice. The only thing I consider is an added expense directly resulting from the soarer is insurance, but considering I've already got 4.5 grand out of them already, havig only been insured for 2 years, I cant even fault that as such.
Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - 12:55 pm, by: Daniel Clarke(Dieseltrain)
I purchased mine in March.
$10,500 Purchase $1,800 Full Comp insurance $750 FMIC ( fitted it myself) $120 Iridium plugs ( Bday present so dont really count) $145 Dyno and Set Boost $310 for Front tyres 235/40/18's SO far in like 2 months $13,625 .
I also Play golf. Prob have about $2,500 in golf clubs, but hey. I Love my sports. But the old budget is being pretty tight now i got my dream car. but its all worth it.
I also dont smoke and Hardly drink, So i need to be able to spend some money somewhere in this world. Altough the wife does a good job of that. Damn you EBAY!!!!
Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - 01:20 pm, by: Tony Chen(Tchen)
mY V8 last year running cost for 2005 includes -rego greenslip etc. -full insurance -fuel for 1 year 7days a week usage -200K full major service $$ replace all oils + pads -rebuilt AC compressor & regas Total just shy of $7K
Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - 01:33 pm, by: Nick Petkovic(Naissus96)
I got my car in 02/2006 and so far i spent: $15000 to buy it $450 Stamp duty $250 remote immobiliser (alarm worked for 3 days) $250 Tints $18 Band Expander $400 Oil & filter change twice, including transmission oil and diff oil $150 Bendix brake pads (are they any good?) $110 fuel per week (i work 50km from my house, was promised a company car and had it for a week) $90 aircon regas $5 for carwash every week It had a blinky dash syndrome but that was fixed under warranty as well as rebuilding the aircon compressor.
So all-up: $18448 including fuel and washing
That figure looks scary. Im never going to put everything on paper again
Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - 05:06 pm, by: Ken Bruns(Uncle_ken)
Adding up what we have spent on things is always interesting, and quite often scary as hell! I often recall an incident back in the early 90's when I was issued with a notice of a three year full audit from the Tax office in which I had to account for every dollar earnt and spent over those three years. (My darling exwife was a Tax Auditor.....hmmmm?) anyway, as I got into it one category I had to check was for fines of anykind, so being the somewhat anal keep every record and receipt kind of guy that I am- I checked,....well buga me! In the years 1990-1993 I had managed to collect over three thousand dollars worth of speeding fines alone!!!! THAT set me back thinking a bit! Not long after that I sold the car I was driving and bought a four cylinder Mercedes, it was comfortable, pleasant prestigious and above all slow!Going on from that though, I beleive keeping records of how much we spend and on what is a vital part of learning about ourselves. I see it as part of my work nearly every day, you would be shocked to hear how many people out there have absolutely NFI about where their money goes or what they spend ot on -as if it isn't them that's spending it....and its not important because they've got heaps of it!!
Don Bagnall Moderator New Zealand I have LESS Soarers than Hayden :-(
Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - 05:21 pm, by: Shane McInnes(Soarin_tt)
Im not even gonna try and add my expenses up, will be here for ever trying to work it out. Then when i do i will cry. Ive spent a load on my car. Ive owned it for abit over 3yrs.