I’m in my early 30s, have an average wage and I’m not exactly reckless with my money, yet since passing my driving test 15 years ago, when I was still at school, I’ve never felt an increase in purchase power when it comes to the car I drive, if anything it’s probably gone the other way as I got a lot of help from my parents with my first car.

Nevertheless I have sat and watched as my mates who are in similar financial positions to me are driving around in brand new Volkswagens, Jags and Audis. My best mate got a Mercedes Benz A Class business car leasing deal with his new job which I could stomach, fair play to him. He admitted he couldn’t afford a personal car lease Mercedes Benz A Class. But my other mate is driving around in a brand new Audi TT, that he has got on a personal lease. Now when he mentioned this in the past I always just thought he was a materialistic fool who was throwing money away and putting himself in an awful position just so he could show off. Sound jealous? Well I was. Anyway I was chatting to him the other day about it and he maintains that he hasn’t had to change his lifestyle much if at all to accommodate the monthly payments, and to be fair to him it sounded like it was adding up. He said he was originally looking to get finance on a used Audi TT from 2014 worth £13,490, that would have ended up costing him 48 monthly payments of £321.69. That means he will have spent £15,441 on the car by the end of the contract, to own a car that will be worth about 8 grand by the end of the 4 year contract. That means he would probably have spent somewhere between £6000 and £8000 over the course of the 4 year period. Alternatively he could drive a brand new Audi TT  for £253 per month (after an initial payment of £2,576.52) via a Audi TT contract hire deal meaning he would have to spend £14,467 for the luxury of driving a brand new £26,000 car for 4 years. So the decision comes to this, £7K (give or take) to drive a 3 year old Audi TT for 4 years or £14,467 to drive a brand spanking new TT for 4 years.

Obviously it depends on what you need your car for, but in my mates case, he just wanted the best car he could have for the money he could afford, and he would rather drive a brand new Audi TT than a 3 year old Audi TT despite the £6000 saving (over the course of 4 years). I agreed and now we both have a personal contract hire Audi TT on the drive!