Cost of Car Ownership over 9 years ...

We've just replaced our 15-year old car, which we've owned for the last 9 years.   It was just about on its last legs, was going to cost a fortune to keep on the road for another year, and it effectively had zero residual value when we got rid of it.  

Still, it's been a good workhorse for us, had carried tonnes of stuff and taken us many times on very long journeys both in the UK and across mainland Europe.

Anyway, I thought I'd take a look at what this car had actually cost us during the time we owned it, and so here's the summary spreadsheet (click on it for a larger image) :-

A few things of note :-

• the spreadsheet was slightly complicated to construct, because for six of the last nine years we've also owned another car, but I keep good records so all the relevant details for this one are correct, including the fuel spends which I always record separately for each vehicle.

• we used to have recovery breakdown insurance, but stopped paying for this several years ago, and if it had broken down then we would have just paid the going rate to get it recovered.  

• the annual cost of insuring the car has dropped off considerably - in 2018 it was less than half the cost of 2010.  This is due to a combination of me getting older (!) and the fact that when we bought the car I had zero no-claim's discount because I'd worked overseas prior to this time and hadn't owned a vehicle in my own name for several years.

• in 2010 we bought a reasonably common, but quite large, 6-year old car with 48,000 miles on the clock, and we paid £4,650 for it.   We've replaced it, albeit not quite like-for-like, with another 6-year old car that's done 55,000 miles and which cost £8,750.   Others we've looked at recently of a similar size, specification and age were all around £7,000 - £9,000, so the initial costs of purchase seem to have increased hugely, even taking inflation into account.

• it's worth noting that I carried out all of the car servicing and a lot of the repair works myself - the costs of the consumables and replacement parts required are all included in the spreadsheet.

• the average unit cost of ownership over the last 9 years has been £0.35 per mile for an average of 6,930 miles per year (this cost includes the amortisation of the initial purchase price).   HMRC considers £0.45 per mile (for the first 10,000 miles per year) to reflect the costs of ownership of a car, so we're well below this level.

• including the purchase cost, the average annual cost of ownership over the period, excluding fuel, was £1,515.  If we ignore this initial purchase cost, it drops to £999.

I don't think this exercise has told us anything we didn't know already, i.e. that keeping even a fairly modest car on the road costs an awful lot of money, but this has to be set against the immeasurable convenience and utility benefits ...