In two minds about selling?

spuddy

My wife has a Honda Insight. She's owned it for 5 years, and its been utterly brilliant. Nothing, absolutely nothing, has gone wrong. It's ferried her on her commute, on creche runs, and to get groceries without any drama. It even did one trip to the continent a few years ago. Cheap to tax and insure and the boot holds a fair amount for the size of the car. Now if you've ever driven one, you'll know this isn't a machine that appeals to the heart, but my Mrs has no interest in driving dynamics, so that's of no consequence to her.

She will have to change it at some point, should we do so now?

1. It's done 190k kms, and while it's been flawless so far, at some point in time, it will start costing more than it's worth.
   
2. We've just had baby #2, and being able to give granny or other visitors a lift, with both of us, and two car seats in the back, isn't possible.
   
3. Selling a mechanically perfect Honda today has to be easier than selling a potentially less perfect car in 18-24 months time.

Alanstrainor

spuddy wrote: »

1. It's done 190k kms, and while it's been flawless so far, at some point in time, it will start costing more than it's worth.
   
2. We've just had baby #2, and being able to give granny or other visitors a lift, with both of us, and two car seats in the back, isn't possible.
   
3. Selling a mechanically perfect Honda today has to be easier than selling a potentially less perfect car in 18-24 months time.

1. 'Costing more than it's worth' is a false logic in my opinion. It's likely it will require some more expensive works eventually, but provided it's mostly service items (suspension parts perhaps), I see no reason to dump it as a result. Cars need maintenance, even very reliable ones like your insight, this should not invoke fear!

2. This is the main consideration really. If the car is no longer fit for use, then that should be enough reason to start looking. Although your use case sounds like it could be a bit of a stretch. It might be worth imagining how often this circumstance will arise and weigh up the value in changing to something much larger.

3. I don't think this argument holds true necessarily. It's a similar point to what I said in 1. Using your existing reliable car for a further 18 months is unlikely to take it to a stage that it's worthless. Not knowing the current year of your car, looking on donedeal I see 2013-2014 models at the 8k mark. It's more likely that buying something newer will see much steeper depreciation than what your current car.

There's a 4th point here, and that's simply wanting to change. Either to want something with more modern gadgets or features. And obviously size and other factors. This is a legitimate reason to change, but that's entirely up to you to decide.

spuddy

Alanstrainor wrote: »

1. 'Costing more than it's worth' is a false logic in my opinion. It's likely it will require some more expensive works eventually, but provided it's mostly service items (suspension parts perhaps), I see no reason to dump it as a result. Cars need maintenance, even very reliable ones like your insight, this should not invoke fear!

2. This is the main consideration really. If the car is no longer fit for use, then that should be enough reason to start looking. Although your use case sounds like it could be a bit of a stretch. It might be worth imagining how often this circumstance will arise and weigh up the value in changing to something much larger.

3. I don't think this argument holds true necessarily. It's a similar point to what I said in 1. Using your existing reliable car for a further 18 months is unlikely to take it to a stage that it's worthless. Not knowing the current year of your car, looking on donedeal I see 2013-2014 models at the 8k mark. It's more likely that buying something newer will see much steeper depreciation than what your current car.

There's a 4th point here, and that's simply wanting to change. Either to want something with more modern gadgets or features. And obviously size and other factors. This is a legitimate reason to change, but that's entirely up to you to decide.

All fair comments, and of course #4 plays a role. It's always been easy to justify changing cars in the past, but the Insight is just so damn dependable there's no hard reason to justify changing it right now! We'll keep it for the time being, and see how much of a problem point 3 is in practice.