Tesco must be off their trolley

[ARW]

But £15.20 a week on food is not a typical budget (in the UK).

I really must find out where my money goes (it's not on food)

[Andy Champ]

That's what I say. Back on the trolley are they?

FWIW I ran my last car for over 100k miles on cheap supermarket stuff (sold it when the radiator started leaking, the cam was getting rattly, the exhaust was on its way out AND the clutch bight point was getting rather high...) and 80K on this one.

Andy

[ARW]

Does that mean that you are spending a lot on the depreciation of your car?

Fuel is the major cost of my van.

Let's assume I do 30,000 miles a year and that I get around 45mpg. So that's

30000/45 gallons per year ie 666.66 gallons per year.

Call it £1.35 a litre for diesel ie £6.13 a gallon and that means that I spend £4089.56 on fuel each year

Now all you need to know is what I have spent on repairs, depreciation, court costs, insurance, VED and MOTs in the last 4 years - have I missed anything?

Let's assume that I have paid for the repairs to be undertaken and not just paid for the parts that I have needed. That would be about a grand in total over the last 4 years.

The VED is about £200 per year.

The MOT is £40 per year

The insurance is about £400 per year.

The court costs are up to me - I choose to speed:-)

Depreciation costs. I paid £2600 for the van, so at the moment that is £650 a year if I was to give the van away in the morning.

[Andy Burns]

And think of all the money you've saved by never visiting a carwash :-P

[Dave Liquorice]

That you got one coupon for 10p off per litre when you bought enough of a five different products. Gold Blend Coffee, Thortons Chocolate, Loo roll (I think might have been kitchen roll) and a couple of others.

That didn't last long, doesn't look like I'll get to go shopping until Friday(*), was hopeing to get another coupon then fill up over the weekend with not many litres short of 100. Still just 10p off is nice.

(*) One of the phone lines has died today and will have to wait for the BT man tommorow.

[Nightjar]

It means that, according to the AA figures, for my class of car and annual mileage, VED, depreciation, cost of capital (what the purchase price would earn if invested instead) and insurance are the main costs. ICBA to work out the actual figures for my car. Insurance and VED are lower, but depreciation and cost of capital will be more.

You can view the AA figures here:

Fuel is the major cost of my van.

That comes out at around 21p per mile, of which 13.63p is for fuel. Saving 1p per litre will save you 0.1p per mile, or rather less than

0.5% of your total cost per mile.

Colin Bignell

[ARW]

So every car driver pays 2ppm for parking and tolls?

[Owain]

per person per day (as at Sept 2010)

Owain

[Nightjar]

On 21/11/2012 22:23, ARW wrote: ...

As it says in the notes, that is the national average cost for an urban driver. I rarely pay for parking, but I do run up quite a bit in tolls when travelling in France.

Colin Bignell

[Dave Liquorice]

Same here, paying for parking is a major put off in going into Carlisle or Newcastle and to a lesser extent Hexham or Penrith.

What bugs me with hospital parking is that many are pay in advance when you haven't any idea how long you are going to be there. The clinic might be running on time and you can be in and out in less than an hour or it could be running an hour and half late. Hospitals ought to be "pay on exit", some are.

Wrong people to email, you should have wriiten to the hospital trust to complain about their parking policy.

[polygonum]

It also bugs me that you can take someone to A&E and have to pay - but if it is a real, urgent A&E issue, searching round to get some machine-acceptable coins before speeding to the hospital is crazy.

"Sorry, gran, pops has pegged it because I used up all my change at the shops."

A few years ago, I had to take partner to A&E for what seemed (and might have been) a life-threatening emergency and ended up in pretty much that situation. Luckily found a few coins in the car. Even then, had to leave her alone in order to go and feed the ticket machine.

It's no longer a problem at that hospital. They downgraded A&E to minor injuries and then (I think) closed it.

[David]

Car engines are becoming more and more sensitive to fuel quality, especially direct injection petrol engines. With longer journeys, there is less difference in the quantity of by-products from using branded fuels to supermarket stuff. But, shorter trip cars that are mainly for urban use will see markedly more contamination in the combustion chambers and inlet ports from supermarket fuels.

David

[Bob Eager]

SWTNFI managed to break down on the motorway about 20 miles from home last winter, on one of the coldest days. The car was 2 weeks old.

Turned out that the Tesco fuel didn't have enough (any?) anti-waxing agent (or whatever it is) and it was just *too* cold. Local dealer said they'd had a *lot* of calls.

(AA 'recovered' the car to the dealer, which is 5 mins from home, dealer fitted new filter etc. and cleaned it all out gratis)

[Tim Streater]

Wot fuel?

[SteveW]

No, they should be paying you for your wasted time when they book twenty people in at the same time and then see them in the reverse order to that in which they arrived :( or when the clinic is running late.

Or as happened to me the other week ... I had a GP appointment at 9:20 and received a reminder for an ENT appointment at 15:00. Now allowing for travelling time to and from work, plus a bit spare in case of hold-ups, it made it pretty pointless to go to work after the late running GP appointment. I attended the ENT appointment only to be told that it was a waste of time, as they hadn't received results from the tests (that they hadn't yet carried out!) That cost me six extra hours off work - at £40 an hour, I was not happy!

SteveW

[Dave Liquorice]

Seems a bit odd to attend a clinic when you don't know what it's about. =

But I guess there is loads of background that we don't need to know.

Take a days leave or throw a sicky. Only works for the wage slaves though.

[Dave Liquorice]

T'wod 'ave been diesel. Petrol doesn't suffer the waxing problem.

[Bob Eager]

I think only diesel waxes.

[Jules Richardson]

Nah, northern Minnesota, so top-middle :-) Nevada would be the closest.

[Tim Streater]

1) What sort of temps can bring this on? 2) Once it waxes, is that it or does it "merely" need to warm up?