New tool: what your car really costs you a month, not just the instalment

Personal Finance
1

A car costs you far more than the monthly instalment, and the biggest expense is usually the one you never see leave your account, the value it quietly loses while it sits in your driveway. So I built a tool that adds up the true cost of owning a car in South Africa and boils it down to a real rand a month and rand a kilometre.

It counts all of it, line by line:

Depreciation, the value the car loses. This is normally the single biggest cost, and it is easy to forget because no money leaves your account for it each month, you only feel it on the day you sell. You pick how well your car holds its value, a Hilux or Fortuner keeps far more than a luxury or niche brand, or you type in your own expected resale.

Finance interest and fees, the real cost of borrowing. The tool counts only the interest and fees here, not the capital you repay, because that capital is already the value the car loses. Counting both would be double counting, which is exactly why the instalment on its own overstates what the car really costs.

Fuel, at the current pump price, insurance, servicing, tyres and the licence disc.

It handles a balloon or residual too, and warns you when your car is likely to be worth less than the balloon you still have to settle, the negative equity trap that catches a lot of people at the end of a deal.

For a R400,000 car kept five years and financed, it comes out around R11,000 a month all in, roughly R6 to R7 a kilometre, with depreciation as the biggest slice. That surprises most people.

Try it here: https://southafricafacts.co.za/cost-of-owning-a-car-south-africa/

It pairs with the Car vs Uber calculator and the Trip Fuel Cost calculator already on the site. Have a look and tell me if the figures match what your car actually costs you, I am keen to know whether the depreciation assumptions feel right for your make.

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Quick update on this one. A few of you said the 4x4 and bakkie crowd would get the most out of a tool like this, so I have added an optional “4x4, bakkie and overlanding kit” mode to the calculator.

Flip the switch and it counts three things a normal car calculator quietly ignores.

The build. Bull bar, winch, dual battery, canopy or roof tent, suspension, drawers, the lot. You enter what you spent and the honest share you expect to get back at resale, and it shows the rest as a real monthly cost of owning the vehicle. This is the number nobody likes to look at. A R120,000 build with only 30 percent coming back works out to about R1,400 a month, and roughly R84,000 of it is simply gone, because most buyers value the vehicle first and the kit second.

Tyres, on their own line. All-terrain rubber costs more and wears out sooner, so you set the price per tyre, the set size and the life in km, and it works the cost per kilometre out properly instead of burying it inside maintenance.

Extra fuel when loaded, towing or off-road. A loaded 4x4 with a roof tent, or one towing a caravan, easily burns 15 to 40 percent more than the brochure figure, so you can lift the fuel number to match reality.

The rest of the tool still ties out to the cent. The build money you never recover shows up as a genuine cost rather than quietly disappearing, which for most builds is the honest and slightly painful part.

It is off by default, so if you drive an ordinary car nothing changes. But if you have built something, put your real numbers in and tell me whether the total lands where you expect: https://southafricafacts.co.za/cost-of-owning-a-car-south-africa/

Popular bakkies like the Hilux and Ranger hold their value well, which softens the blow, but the running side is heavier than most of us admit until we add it all up. Keen to hear what your setup actually costs you.

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Ja this is a good tool, people never count the depreciation, they only look at the instalment and think they can afford it. On the farm my bakkie is a working tool but the value it loses in the first three years is kak, and everyone forgets fuel and the servicing on a diesel is not cheap either.

Lekker that you added the 4x4 kit part. That build money is real, a canopy and drawers and a decent suspension runs into good money and it never comes back when you sell. One thing you must maybe add is tyres, on the veld and gravel roads I go through them fast and thats a proper cost people dont think about. People must just be honest with themselves before they sign.

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Thanks Johan, you nailed the exact reason we built it. The instalment is the number everyone fixates on, but depreciation in those first three years is the silent killer, especially on a bakkie you have kitted out.

Good shout on tyres. On a farm 4x4 chewing through a set on rough roads is a proper cost, and you are right that most people forget it until the bill lands. For now it sits inside the upkeep line, so if you bump your monthly upkeep figure up a bit you can bake in a tyre set every few years. I like the idea of breaking it out on its own though, will look at adding a dedicated tyre field so it is not hidden.