Is Keeping Up With The Jones Still a Thing?

"Nothing so undermines your financial judgement as the sight of your neighbor getting rich."

— Often attributed to J.P. Morgan

Younger people are not as interested in cars and many dont drive at all. In the city at least. They are more interested in their own physical appearance than their cars.

If you can drive to your job then i suppose its natural to notice the cars of your colleagues. Same with living in an estate. But as i get older im not as bothered. But if someone has the interest and money to buy nice new cars, good luck to them. More for the rest of us to buy second hand.

99% of those new Landcruisers you are seeing are commercial, so 2 seat vans bought by companies and the self employed.

Rich families dont buy passenger Landcruisers, they buy X5's, Cayennes and Range Rover.

Who in their right mind buys a van without getting the VAT back

Someone who is not VAT registered doesn't have to pay any sales VAT to Revenue. I paid over €120,000 in VAT to Revenue last year. I would much rather not register for VAT and take the hit on a few thousand in VAT on a van.

buying a commercial vehicle for private non business use, you have to tax it as private CC rate which for the above is €1371 per year. you only need to CVRT it when it is 1 year old.

Keeping up with the Joneses has, is, and will always be a thing.

It happens in every single aspect of life, from fashion, to food choices, to holiday destinations, sports teams, you name it. It's simply down to people's desire to conform and not stand out (one way way another.) You don't want be the person with the oldest car on the road, do you?

A few years ago, my cousin moved into a fixer-upper house. To be honest most of the houses on the road needed a bit of work. They renovated the entire thing, back to bare blocks, which took a while as they were doing it with the help of family and friends for the most part, and it looked great. That set the new standard for the road, and within a few moths, over half the houses were repainted, had new windows, or other renovation work done.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, a friend of mine's neighbors have two absolutely ridiculous cars sitting outside their little house in the tiny front garden. I won't say both cars, but one is fairly new Range Rover Sport SV (€289k new), and the other car is well over €100k. They just look totally out of place, and nobody wants to keep up with that.

I mean in general terms, I don't personally don't care terribly much and spend 5% of my salary on a car loan.

But like it or not, cars are a status symbol just like anything else. Even if you or I don't care a whole lot, other people (in general) can and will treat you differently for it.

What do you think is going to happen if you name the area?

Personally I wouldn't be happy unless I had a Bentley Baytaga in green. We say one the other day, the thing is it wouldn't fit on our drive.

My husband spotted it, I'm not much of a petrol head.

…although it did put paid to all N1 5-seat utility vehicles in Ireland 😕

The latest Bentayga model especially in lwb form isn't too bad but the original model was just an overpriced uglier version of the Q7 it's based on. Mind you the hybrid system in them is not supposed to be good - not the Porsche system like in other Bentleys - give me a G class or fully loaded Range Rover any day

Not by the daughter I hope .lol

My friends all drive Porsche's, I must make amends…..