The Audi isn't fully ours yet.
We bought it in December 2022 using a car loan from Audi. A loan means Audi paid for the car, and we pay them back a bit at a time.
That's everything we still owe Audi. Once it's paid, the car is ours forever.
The car cost £38,830. Because it was bought on a loan, Audi adds extra money called interest (like a fee for borrowing). So the whole thing costs about £50,237 in total.
■ red part = the interest (about £10,700)
These come out of the bank by themselves. Nobody has to do anything for them to be paid, but the money has to be in the account.
The last payment is £18,558.75, all at once. We don't have that much spare money in the bank.
We borrow the £18,559 from a bank as a normal loan, and use it to pay Audi in one go. Then:
And if we ever want to sell the car, we can, because it belongs to us. We just pay off what's left of the bank loan with the money from the sale.
Selling: a buyer offered £15,910, but we still owe about £19,000. We'd have to pay about £3,000 extra and we'd have no car.
New car: about £465–£900 a month instead of £390, and at the end we still wouldn't own it.
Striped part = could go up to £900 a month.
Now: check Mum's credit score for free on the ClearScore app.
December: compare bank loans for £18,600 over 5 years and pick the cheapest one.
January: get the loan. The money goes into the bank account Audi takes payments from.
5 February: Audi takes the last payment by itself. The car is ours!
Also: get new tyres soon at Kwik Fit (they're worn), and book the MOT before 17 December.
Numbers come from the Audi letters and emails. The bank loan monthly amount and the car's value are estimates.