Hi everyone,
Firstly, I cannot thank you all enough for taking the time to reply to me and share all your wisdom – you really really have helped me so much.
After talking to my husband (and pushing him to get involved in the decision making rather than just saying “whatever you decide is fine” – if he were any more laid back he would fall over!) and talking to a nice guy at a different Peugeot dealership, we have decided to go for the 3008 Hybrid.
It is my son’s car of choice and the award is for him after all and joining the scheme enables us to sell our current family car and bank the money. We have calculated that we will save at least £4K over the 3 years in tax, insurance, repairs, maintenance and fuel – and we have taken the time to use sensible and accurate figures in those calculations – so we will be putting that amount of money into the bank every month and adding it to the capital from the sale of our car. So by the end of the scheme we should have a good amount (about £13k) to put towards either purchasing the vehicle or buying something else.
I know it may seem that I’ve over thought it a bit but these figures involved are a lot of money to us. We’re not wealthy but we are comfortable in that we have enough money coming in to pay our bills, have a little holiday every year (but not a flashy one!) and save a bit every month for things like Christmas. We live to our means and have no debts (apart from a mortgage), if we can’t afford something, we don’t buy it. I was an idiot in my 20’s and ran up stupid credit card debt and bank loans and learned the value of money the hard way. I worked hard to pay everything back and swore I would never ever get into that situation again. My credit rating is now the highest possible and the bank are constantly trying to get me to borrow money off them and get into debt but I just don’t want to go back down that road again. Not now I have 3 children to care for and feed. So as a result, I am very cautious with our money and need to make sure that whatever financial decisions I make are the best ones for us as a family.
Having said all that, I think I am worrying a little too much about the future. As my husband pointed out, as long as we keep the money from the sale of our car on one side and make sure we save the £4K on top then we are still going to have £13k to buy another car if we can’t afford to buy the 3008 at the end of the lease. And you can get a pretty decent enough family car for £13k so we’re just going to go for it and deal with the future when it happens.
Thanks again for all your help.