Driving Environment
The majority of UK motorists, probably spend 30-90 minutes of their daily commute in heavy traffic. Traffic jams & queues seriously hurt fuel economy & ultimately your pocket, so I would encourage you to explore alternative routes to your destination. This may seem obvious to some, but there are a lot of sheep out there who just ‘follow the herd’, they drive the same route every day, get stuck in the same traffic jams etc. If you are one of these people, you may need to go take a Bungee jump/Rollercoaster ride/Sky dive etc . An eye-opening experience of that nature should snap you out of ‘Robot Mode’ and start you thinking for yourself.
Imagine for a moment that you work at home. You get up at 8:15, send the kids off to school, grab a coffee, lounge on the sofa & write fluff on your laptop till lunchtime. You don’t watch Televison news or buy a paper, only robots do that, they are used to misery & depression and think it’s normal. Instead you take a drive out & visit friends or family for a few hours, and get back in time for the kids coming home from school. Then after you help the kids with their homework and have your dinner, you play online poker for the rest of the day, or watch a movie, play your guitar/piano etc, no traffic, no boss, & no stress. Well that’s my average day and I love it! I am not a rich man, but life sure is sweet! Most of you will not have a choice, and you must suffer the daily grind through the jams. Something you should be asking yourself is, if your car is suitable for the environment you spend the most time driving in? If you are planning to buy a used car in the near future, you should be looking for a diesel car. With fuel prices so high these days you need to get the most miles for your money. There are many frugal Petrol hatchbacks I could recommend, but if you rack up high miles, or you need anything larger than a Fiesta, Corsa, Clio etc, a diesel car is the way to go, the benefits are obvious. If you spend half your daily commute stuck in traffic at tick-over, the diesel car will use a lot less fuel, probably less than half of the equivalent petrol vehicle, simply because diesels are much more efficient at tick-over than an equivalent petrol engine. Also let’s not forget to mention the generally better economy for the remainder of your journey, add in stronger reliability, longer engine life, lower depreciation and higher resale value, its just plain silly not to buy one! Some of you may be thinking ‘but Diesel Fuel costs more than Petrol on UK forecourts’ yes it does, and a new diesel car usually costs more to buy in the first place. When you do the maths on petrol v diesel, at 12,000 miles per year, it really only begins to pay off AFTER 3 years, this is also the point in ownership, when a lot of people would change their car for a new one, eliminating the savings. For higher mileage driver’s, it starts to pay off much sooner. I would recommend that if you buy a brand new car, you should keep it for as long as possible, at least 5 years if you can, to really feel a difference in your pocket. With depreciation being the 2ndlargest motoring expense for UK motorists, it makes far greater financial sense to buy a used car. An example of smarter thinking, would be to buy a 3 year old car ,with warranty, at your local car auction (pay trade price), drive it for 1 year, then sell it privately to get all your money back! Zero depreciation? Well maybe for you! We call that one ‘The depreciation game’. As any good used car guide will show you, there can be a huge difference between Trade Price & Private Sale price of any used car, and that is the Wave you get to ride on, for up to a year. Anyway, this article is supposed to be about driving environment and I am way off track.
The reality of your daily commute is more likely: up at 6.30, quick breakfast, you then bolt out the door, into your car, and you spend the next 90 minutes stuck in traffic, flicking mints at the car in front. You eventually arrive at work, just in time to hear a lecture on punctuality. If that sounds like your typical day, then i’m smirking right now, for the simple truth is, if you work for someone else ‘they’ decide how much you earn this month, and unless you inherit a few million, you will always be poor. I’m not trying to make you feel bad, I just want you see that in the real world, there is no such thing as job security, and there are only sheep & wolves in the business world. Don’t be the Sheep.
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