We have already proven that buying a brand new car when you only use it over the weekends is 3 times more expensive than rental cars.
You can do a quick recap over here: Long Term Car Rentals VS Buying Car – Scenario #1.
The calculations in the previous post were around medium size car Toyota Corolla. If you were to rent a people mover (7 or 8 seater), you could expect the purchase price would be even higher. Therefore hiring such vehicle will save you more money than owning one.
Lets put another life style under the review.
Scenario #2. Extremely active family. Driving from and to work on a daily basis, constantly taking kids to school, driving to shops multiple times a week.
Now, lets also assume they are taking long holidays a few times a year – Snowy Mountains for 3 weeks in winter, Byron Bay for 2 weeks in spring, 2 long weekends in Jarvis bay during summer and 2 days at the Blue Mountains in Autumn. Not to mention, they like camping so would need a 4WD for most of their adventures.
Wow, we have one of the target of finding the cheapest option for those guys.
As you can guess, buying a 4WD just like renting one for the whole year will be very expensive. Nevertheless renting will still be cheaper. A brand new Toyota Kluger AWD would cost you at least 44,000.00$. Interests on such loan will be through the roof.
Our goal this time is to minimise the family expenses so they still have some money left to have fun at all those places they are visiting.
To achieve the goal, we will need to come up with a mixed option. Don’t forget rental cars can be changed almost every day.
You can go from a very cheap option renting a Hyundai Getz or similar. A week later you could rent a 12-seater mini bus in case your relatives are in town. Then, you can hire a Four Wheel Drive to go to snow in winter or camping in summer.
Rental cars
Lets roughly calculate how many days you would need the all wheel drive for.
3 weeks in Kozciuszko National Park is 21 days. Renting a 4×4 car will cost about 70$ a day, that rate would include the unlimited kilometres and insurance with default excess. The price for the whole period will be 1470$.
2 weeks in Queensland is 14 days. The total will be 980$.
6 days down south in Jarvis Bay and 2 days up at the Mountains will come to 8 x 70 = 560$.
Lets add at least 3 weekends camping, another 420$.
The total cost for renting the AWD would come to 3430$ annually. I don’t see a reason to continue calculating. There would be no way you can buy even used 4WD for this amount of money.
Its not over, we shall find out what would the family do for the rest of the days when they need to go to work and drop kids to school?
There is roughly 240 working days in the year. Renting a medium size car like Toyota Corolla would cost you 240 x 35 = 8400$.
Guess what? This active family still paid less than a cost of the used car from the scenario #1 (to remind you the previous family sold it for 15,000.00$).
Once again, when hiring a car, you don’t need to pay any extras except your rental fees. When buying one, you pay for the service, road side assistance and insurance out of your pocket.
So scenario 2 proves rental cars for any of your needs all year round are still cheaper when buying a used vehicle and paying all the extra costs for its registration, maintenance and insurance.
