Drivers of expensive cars : what do they do for a living ? ! ?

[Dubaidani13]

Not unless you`re indulging in tax evasion, which is illegal and could get you in serious bother. But if you`re a tax evader (and personally I`ve no time for dishonest scum like that) whether you spend it on a car or a big house or going on expensive holidays is immaterial.

 

nothing to do with evading?!! perfectly legit to use your car for your own business purposes, pay the vat scale charge and claim all your fuel vat back, lease it back to your company, mileage allowances especially if you do high miles and need a big comfortable car:roll:

[sgtkate]

Someone else summed it up well I think, that people have certain things they really want to get and compromise (if they aren't fools) elsewhere. For example I bought a house with my other of less than half the price of the top mortgage we could have got because the house we bought ticked all the boxes anyway. We also wanted to have more 'play money' each month so we didn't have to worry too much about scrimping and saving to get by. As a result I have a car that probably looks hilarious on my estate. Cyclone knows what it is and would probably agree it's a v silly car. But I love it, and even having a baby soon isn't going to make me change it for the world. I do have to sacrifice other things to pay for it though.

 

So it's all about choice. Average salary is £24k (I think?), say you are living with your partner and have no kids, so income of nearly £50k. Most people could easily afford to spend £500 a month on a car if they chose to, but most don't as they don't want to sacrifice of a smaller house or lower food bills.

 

---------- Post added 15-12-2015 at 10:39 ----------

 

A lot of truth to the first part of this. When I was a retail manager for a well known electrical chain I always thought it quite amazing how many people would purchased own brand videos/tvs/hi-fis etc and load em up into a flashy Merc CL or similar. I guess all their wealth was being shown externally and they were happy to put up with cheap crap in their homes.

 

As for jobs that people do in order to pay for them... interesting question. A friend of mine works as a computer programmer in 'that London' and, as a result, doesn't own a car. He fancied a BMW 6 series convertible (£65k worth of car) but to make it worth while would have to move out of London. Tried to get a job in Reading (which is a bit of a centre of some of the big IT brands) but would have to take a £14K PER YEAR wage cut in order to do so, which meant he would no-longer be able to afford his BMW... Bit of a catch 22, but does make me wonder what kind of salary he is on that a move out of the city would cost him £14K per annum...

 

Not in IT. If you have around 5 years experience in a specific IT field (i.e. not just working on a computer helpdesk) say computer programming, database engineer etc then going rates even up in Sheffield are pushing the £50k mark. And that's without any specialist skills on top. If you've got security skills as well you can add another £5-6k a year on. In London you'd be looking more like £70k a year. If you went contracting you'd be looking at a minimum of £400 a day in Sheffield and £550 in London.

[tzijlstra]

Now, I will concede that £25k is more than a lot of people earn a year BUT you would hardly consider it to be mega rich luxury car levels. Thanks to credit, anything can become affordable to those who want it enough.

 

I need to correct you here, 25K is 1,5K below the national average, add to that the fact that many households consist of two earners these days and it is likely that quite a few people around the country live of something over 40K a year.

 

Going back to the subjectivity of what is an expensive car, most cars on our roads are either company cars or family cars, company cars account for the grey steel lease-fleet you see on motorways (Think Audi, BMW, Merc, Jag etc) - which I suppose is what the OP is talking about, family cars account for what you see in your local roads (Think Ford, Renault, Peugeot etc). Most family cars I would think are bought on private loans or cash and therefore tend to be 'cheaper'.

 

Again, at that point the subjectivity comes into play, we drive a 7 year old Volvo that was 2 years old and cost us 16,5K when we bought it, a lot of money for most people, but to us it makes sense to do it that way, we save money on a regular basis so we can drive a car we like and because we do we end up paying considerably less in monthly costs than Joe Bloggs down the road who buys a (bog standard) new Ford Focus on finance every two years.

 

We are looking at replacing it in a few months and got told our car is worth between 6 and 7K as a trade-in, so in five years we have spent 2K a year on devaluation, whereas Joe Bloggs is likely to have spend more than that on devaluation PLUS a significant amount on interest.

 

So what is expensive? You tell me!

[foxy lady]

Just as a matter of interest. If someone had bought an Aston Martin, Ferrari, Lamborghini, AC, Iso, Maserati, Bizzarrini, or Jensen in 1965, instead of an Austin A60; and they had kept it in good order, would that be considered an extravagance.

 

http://www.preloved.co.uk/adverts/show/611655203/1965-ferrari-275.html?utm_source=newsnow&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=trovitcars

 

for Sale

1965 FERRARI 275 Price: £1,600,000

 

http://www.carandclassic.co.uk/car/C276280

 

for Sale

1965 A60 CAMBRIDGE AUTOMATIC Price:£1200

Edited December 15, 2015 by foxy lady

[Dubaidani13]

Just as a matter of interest. If someone had bought an Aston Martin, Ferrari, Lamborghini, AC, Iso, Maserati, Bizzarrini, or Jensen in 1965, instead of a Austin A60; and they had kept it in good order, would that be considered an extravagance.

 

no it would be considered very astute

[denlin]

You can pick up quite a few Rolls' for under 10k now.

 

It's a breadcakes not rolls and you can get 12 for a quid at Joblot. For the OP. I don't know and TBH I don't care. We are quite happy with our trusty Peugeot 406. All cars are for is to get you safely, economically and relatively comfortably from A to B without breaking down. The Peugeot 406 is all that. Ours is 15 years old and sailed through the test in August

[L00b]

Just as a matter of interest. If someone had bought an Aston Martin, Ferrari, Lamborghini, AC, Iso, Maserati, Bizzarrini, or Jensen in 1965, instead of a Austin A60; and they had kept it in good order, would that be considered an extravagance.

Unless that someone is dead and you're asking their current-day inheritor, then if that someone could afford to buy it in 1965 and somehow still alive today, I very much doubt it matters much to them 50 years later

 

FWIW a colleague of mine runs tries to keep running a '93 plated 928 GTS as a summer/fair weather pleasure. £73k new OTR in 1993 (adjust for intervening inflation: )

 

Over the last 7 or 8 years that I've worked with him, he's probably spent two or three times the price of a brand new medium family hatch to keep it in running order (I'm not talking show condition, just running): it's £2k for a NOS air mass flow sensor. Just the part. I was only joking with him the other day that it'd probably have cost him less to build an entire 'good' one from spares, than keep throwing money at life-supporting his

 

It's a very nice car, a proper supercar in its day (to an extent, probably still) and there's really no green eye about it here (he's had 928s for donkey's years, this one's his 3rd (the last one floated away in the floods in 2007)), if anything the petrolhead in me admires his perseverance for the sake of the model, in the face of ever-dwindling numbers of 928s.

 

But, unless you're a Stuttgart purist, it's still an extravagance, by any measure of the word.

Edited December 15, 2015 by L00b

[Mr Bloke]

It's a breadcakes not rolls and you can get 12 for a quid at Joblot. For the OP. I don't know and TBH I don't care. We are quite happy with our trusty Peugeot 406. All cars are for is to get you safely, economically and relatively comfortably from A to B without breaking down. The Peugeot 406 is all that. Ours is 15 years old and sailed through the test in August

First giggle of the day!

[Cyclone]

nothing to do with evading?!! perfectly legit to use your car for your own business purposes, pay the vat scale charge and claim all your fuel vat back, lease it back to your company, mileage allowances especially if you do high miles and need a big comfortable car:roll:

 

You can't claim for mileage AND lease your own car to your own company (in fact I've never heard of that last bit).

 

There is no tax advantage to buying a car through your own company, hasn't been for a long time.

 

---------- Post added 15-12-2015 at 11:12 ----------

 

If you went contracting you'd be looking at a minimum of £400 a day in Sheffield and £550 in London.

 

Finding £400/day in Sheffield can be a bit of a struggle actually.

It's possible, but I'd say that the average rate for an experienced Java developer is probably £350.

It's a little higher in Leeds, it's easier to argue for £400/day there.

 

That said, you can find 400+ in Sheffield, and there are still contracts wanting to pay 300/day in Leeds.

 

---------- Post added 15-12-2015 at 11:14 ----------

 

no it would be considered very astute

 

Very lucky more likely.

 

---------- Post added 15-12-2015 at 11:15 ----------

 

It' For the OP. I don't know and TBH I don't care. We are quite happy with our trusty Peugeot 406. All cars are for is to get you safely, economically and relatively comfortably from A to B without breaking down. The Peugeot 406 is all that. Ours is 15 years old and sailed through the test in August

 

That's all they're for for YOU. Everyone has different priorities.

[Alcoblog]

Jaguar

XE 27k (5 door sports saloon)

XF 32k (5 door luxury business saloon)

XJ 60k (5 door luxury saloon)

F-type 50k (2 door sports car)

 

What you're seeing regularly are probably the XE and XF models. Not that they look visually all that different from the XJ.

 

Not forgetting the beautiful £1.2million lightweight E-type