I am looking for advice/reassurances about my current situation.
We have exchanged on a property, having sold ours. Completion isn’t until mid June but we are taking out a big mortgage on a house which we will likely live until we are at least approaching retirement (35 odd years). The mortgage has us stretched but we are comfortable with the payments. We haven’t got big expenses, no cars on finance and we have one child who is of primary school age so most of our spare money is spent on time with our child.
Jobs wise, my wife and I have income of around £55k each, my wife’s job is very stable whilst my line of work can fluctuate however I have been in the same job for 5 years and am not looking at changing.
Savings: after completing on the house and getting the work done, we will have around £10k left for rainy days. We usually save around £500 a month.
So last week we were in a car accident. Nobody hurt, not our fault but it has written off our family car. Settlement is around £8k. I brought the car at 3 years old in 2018 (for £24k) and it never missed a beat.
We have a main family car and then have a little run around which is cheap to repair when I cannot do the work myself.
So my dilemma, do I use that £8k and take some money out of our £10k savings to buy a really decent family car (£16-17k) or do I buy a car for £8k and fix any problems it may have.
We do a lot of driving in the main family car, we have family and friends spread throughout the UK.
It’s never a good time to write off a car, but currently being in the exchange period has made it worse because I couldn’t get finance if I wanted to.