Plan at the moment is to spend no more than £2k to get a economical car for the commute and use the Zed at the weekends.
If I get the job then I will have the car ready for the drives - and until then I'll probably only have to fill it up once a month with my current commute.
As for renting vs buying - I really don't want to rent, it feels like throwing money down the drin and will just make it harder when saving to buy somewhere.
Renting..... well you either pay (for example) £500 a month to rent somewhere, or £500 a month in interest to line a banks greedy palms for your mortgage. Then, with property prices falling, i know people whose houses have dropped by 25% this last year alone, so on a 150k house thats £37500 you have just thrown away over 12 months. Of course, people say that over the long term property goes up in value... and it does.. but it would have to go up by a hell of a lot to give you a better return over what you are paying in interest on the mortgage.
I'm sorry but that's utter rubbish.
A £500 a month mortgage is not £500 of interest. A certain % is capital unless your on interest only. Even if a property loses 25%, it's only relevant when you sell. If you sell in 10 years times, it's value 9 years before that is wholly irrelevant. House prices are not like car depreciation; they actually go both ways
If someone rents for ten years, thats 120 rent payments (120 x £500 = £60,000) down the drain. A 100% waste of money. There is no return on that money. If you bought a place, yes a % is interest but you may have paid off £25,000 or so and the property may have risen £20,000, thats £45,000 of accessible equity that you have. Even if the house price was the same as when you bought it, you could sell up and get £25k back. What would you get if you were renting for ten years? Sweet FA.
this man makes sense!! listen to him.
renting is OK short term, but looking at it as described above. my mate has been paying off 36K of somebody elses mortgage. he has been renting for approx 4 years now. when i ask him why does he rent (as he could easily afford a mortgage) he says the house prices are too high. but in those 4 years he could have been paying off a massive chunk of his house.
to me its a total no brainer really