Today – How to pick your next family car
If you have a new baby on the way and are going to need a new car to cope, there’s a huge amount to choose from. Your days of reckless sport cars and sexy convertibles are over. As a parent you seek safety, security, easy access and lots and lots of room. If you are expecting a child, you will eventually need a family car, so here’s what you should consider.
How to pick your next family car
How are you going to pay?
With over three quarters of all new cars bought using some form of finance, and with dealers trying to sell cars via this method, cash will not mean as much as it used to back in the day, and you’re as likely to get a discount or deal by buying a car on finance.
You can contact a car finance broker for the best car finance deals, you will be able to look in to PCP deals, Hire Purchase agreements and Personal Contract Hire. If you’re using one of these ways to pay for a car, keep an eye on the total price as well as the monthly repayments; an optional extra may not seem that expensive on a monthly basis, but it’s easy to lose sight of the true cost of options, and you may not get your money back when it’s time to sell your car or trade it in.
Petrol or diesel?
It’s often thought that diesel cars are cheaper to run than petrol, but this isn’t always the case. Petrol will work out cheaper to run and cheaper to buy if you’re only doing short journeys or not covering over around 12,000 miles per year.
How to pick your next family car? Consider Seating
The number of kids you have should definitely help to decide what type of car you get. If you have just one kid, it will not be as complicated, but tiny city cars aren’t great for the job as they don’t have a lot of rear seat space in which you can mount a child seat, and their boots are normally too small to accommodate a modern travel system buggy. Indeed, some C-segment hatchbacks struggle to fit large prams in. Once you have three or more kids, it’s a game-changer in terms of vehicle options.
Safety
You’re buying a family car, so safety should be absolutely imperative. Make sure any car you look at has a positive safety rating. While a five-star crash test rating is a good start, these days there’s far more to it than that. There are countless safety systems which aren’t covered at all by such tests, and it’s entirely possible to have a four-star car which performs better in some aspects than most five-star cars, so keep that in mind when deciding on a car to buy.
These are my top tips on How to pick your next family car. Have a look here if you are thinking of selling your car for some good ideas
You might like my post on how to save money on petrol
and this is the car for little kids!
