running costs

I think I mentioned the other day how I don't tend to focus on current events in this blog. Generally it's a fairly light blog about the boring stuff I get up to. However, since I count watching anime and reading manga amongst my favourite past-times and tend to think of myself as a bit of a Japanophile, it seems churlish not to at least acknowledge the horrible-ness that was last Friday's Earthquake and Tsunami.

Earthquakes are pretty horrible, but Tsunami's have to be one of the scariest natural disasters you can imagine. I mean, many other disasters you can protect against, or there can be sufficient warning to evacuate, but something like that happening so close to the Japanese coast meant a heck of a lot of people have unfortunately lost their lives.

Anyway, back to me and the petty concerns of my life.

Last Friday I put my car in for a service and MOT. There was nothing fundamentally wrong with the car, so it past the MOT, but I did need some new brakes, which meant the total rose to a rather eye watering £440.

However, this is only the start of a couple of months of car related expense that's really going to hammer my wallet. Next up, I need a new set of tyres. This wouldn't be so bad, except that apparently my car is the only one that uses this particular model of tyre. That makes them slightly more expensive, but also really difficult to find. Really I need 4 new tyres and they're likely to be about £140 each with the higher VAT rate.

The next expense will be my insurance. This will cost me about £500. I could get it cheaper, but it would mean things like abandoning my no claims protection and increasing my voluntary excess. From experience, these are all things that sound un-necessary, but then if you have an accident it means it ends up costing you five times as much in the long run.

Lastly will be my car tax. This is the one I resent the most - why the hell do I have to pay a separate car tax, given the amount of tax there is on petrol? It's absolutely ridiculous. Especially with it being a flat fee. I mean, it is reduced depending on your carbon emissions, but the reality of carbon emissions is that it's actually more to do with how you drive, rather than the numbers in the brochure.

I mean, someone I know has recently got a hybrid, so has far lover car tax, yet he's only been getting about 43 miles to the gallon. I don't think I've ever gotten les than 45 miles to the gallon, yet my car tax is higher.

I can't remember how much my car tax is, but it's somewhere in the region of £150, so when you tot all that up, it's all going to set me back the best part of £1,750.

This isn't cheap, but a big part of the problem is that I've made a rod for my own back. See, the car I own is actually what was the top of the line, and that's a big part of why it's so expensive. If I'd had the bog standard model, the tyres would be at least 1/3rd cheaper, and the brakes would be drum brakes, which last a lot longer and are a lot cheaper. Also, the official carbon count would be lower, reducing the tax, and because it would fundamentally be a cheaper car I'm sure the insurance would be lower too.