Getting around

Or ‘Check out my wheels’

Car or public transport?

• Do you want to just travel to work or for fun too?
• Is your house near public transport?
• Do you have somewhere to store a car?
• Owning a car also costs road tax, insurance and fuel

Public transport

• If you enjoy where you live and don’t need to travel often, public transport might be the best option
• You only pay for the journeys you make
• You are helping reduce climate change
• You can do other things while travelling (read, watch TV, play games)

Use the travel ticket link to work out the monthly cost of a travel pass on a bus or the Metro (in NE England) that allows you to travel anywhere on the network.

Owning a car

• If you can save up and buy a car, it is often cheaper
• Many people buy a car through a loan or a PCP scheme
• Both ways lend you the money get the car but charge interest for having the loan
• Insurance and road tax also need to be bought by all road users

Which car do I want?

• Do you want a small car that just gets you places locally?
• Do you want a family car that can carry things on holiday/for leisure (skis, kayak, dog!)?
• Do you want to keep fuel costs down and have a small engine?
• Do you want the fastest car you can get - which costs a lot of money to run (petrol, insurance and road tax will all be a lot higher)?
• Do you want to drive an electric car to reduce emissions and reduce fuel costs?

Ford Fiesta

VW Golf

BMW 5 series

Ferrari (458)

Use the links to choose a car and work out monthly cost of buying each car. You can use the settings on the website to change to electric or different engine sizes for some of these!

Which car can I afford?

The link below takes you to a loan calculator. It can change the amount borrowed and the time taken to repay.

Set the repay time to 60 months (five years of owning the car).

Type in the cost of the car that you have chosen and see how much the monthly cost is. It will also tell you how much interest you pay.

Don’t add it to your monthly spreadsheet yet, we need to add insurance and road tax!

Monthly cost = £

Road Tax

If you are a car owner, you also need to pay Road Tax.

Road Tax is worked out by several factors, most of which are based on how polluting your car is.

Road Tax is not based on how far you drive!

This link takes you to a page where you can enter the make, range and model of the car you picked. It will tell you your annual Road Tax. You need to take that figure and divide by 12 (to get the monthly cost)

Monthly cost = £

Insurance

• Insurance has to be paid by all vehicle owners
• The more powerful and expensive the car, the higher the insurance
• Younger drivers also tend to pay more because they are involved in more accidents
• You can reduce some insurance costs by agreeing to trackers, enhanced security or limited miles being applied

These costs are based on a small family car (VW Golf) per year. To work out your likely insurance cost for the car you come, multiply by the number indicated, then divide by 12 to get your monthly cost.

Add it to your road tax and car loan cost!

Ford Fiesta x 0.6

VW Golf x 1

BMW 5 series x 2.2

Ferrari x 5

Total cost of a car

Total cost of owning the car you want:

​

£

Loan per month: £

+

Road Tax: £

+

Insurance: £

Now add this to your spreadsheet of monthly costs