Keeping a spreadsheet for your shitters..

[DaveDorson]

Anyone else take this approach with their cars or is it just me?

 

It really started this year, I decided to take stock of what I've got "in" and how much each one is costing me to either get to a useable state, or to keep in a usable state in the case of the Mongdoggo.

 

It's quite scary how quickly things add up.. I'm not keeping one for the 72 beetle (I'll update that thread again soon) as it's terrifying, but the black "new beetle" has a running total of around £400 this year and is still to see a tester, the Mongdoggo has cost me £175 so far this year, although that does include converting it to massive front brakes and re-doing the rear discs and pads,  and it's still making an annoying clicking at the front and will need all four tyres replaced in the not too distant future.

 

I'll admit, part of the reason is because I'm taking my household budgeting a bit more seriously with the increase in the cost of living, and rationalising how much my storage etc is costing me, and making sure I don't over-spend on my leisure activities.. it also gives me a good way to "prove" to the director of household finances that me having a workshop is actually cheaper than me paying finance on a sensible car, and having someone else service it, even if it does mean occasionally she can't use my services for the weekend to dig more holes in the garden for plants, or go to some garden centre to buy yet more shit that she'll decide she doesn't want anymore in a few months and will cluttering up the place, but it's a proper eye opener as to just how expensive it is to keep your cars going.

[Split_Pin]

Unless it's stupidly cheap and for a laugh, once you start counting on a regular basis how much old shitters costs you, the fun stops in my opinion.

Thankfully, my OH is the same for her things so we get on fine there!

[maxxo]

no

absolutely no

i've spent £4,200 in the past year on my C5, i don't want to remdind myself of it........would have been cheaper to finance a new car

and the XM

no again

i paid probably too much for it, going to spend too much on it cos like the C5 i love it

it's depressing to think of how much i've spent

[Agila]

Not me. It seems like a complete waste of time. I know cars cost money and apart from football and holidays it's my main money/time outlet.

At times I'll price up what a car cost me and what I've put into it. This means when I sell it, I don't sell it too cheap. I have a habit of fucking cars off if they upset me for some reason and do it cheaply so I don't have to look at them.

Better than how I used to be if something or someone upset me though.

[sierraman]

20 minutes ago, maxxo said:

no

absolutely no

i've spent £4,200 in the past year on my C5, i don't want to remdind myself of it........would have been cheaper to finance a new car

and the XM

no again

i paid probably too much for it, going to spend too much on it cos like the C5 i love it

it's depressing to think of how much i've spent

£4,200 Christ that’s a bad year what went wrong!

I don’t keep tabs on expense to be fair, more I keep an informal tab on the inconvenience. 

[maxxo]

5 minutes ago, sierraman said:

£4,200 Christ that’s a bad year what went wrong!

I don’t keep tabs on expense to be fair, more I keep an informal tab on the inconvenience. 

auto gearbox valve block

rear arm bearings

spheres

4 transmission fluid changes

few small repairs

tyres

servicing

i feel like theres something else but i can't remember

[sierraman]

You are a better man than me, I think I’d have given it a one way ticket on a bill like that! 

[dome]

I'll do it if I buy something broken to fix and sell but not generally for the "keepers" on the fleet.

I should do as much for making a service history record for the time I've had something as I usually forget to list some crucial piece of work I've done when I come to sell it🙄

[Fabergé Greggs]

Nah, the trick is to try to think about all that stuff less. 

I guess one option would be to write it down and set fire to it 🤷‍♂️

[AnnoyingPentium]

I'd rather not see how much the car costs me to keep going, but I reckon it's roughly about £600 so far with more about to add on to that.

[chaseracer]

2 hours ago, maxxo said:

i've spent £4,200 in the past year on my C5

Amateur... 😁

I suppose at least I can use extreme man-maths to spread recent expenditure across 31 years of ownership!

[Popsicle]

Oh I love a spreadsheet for running costs. Probably slightly different for me being a self employed courier, but I've a record of every single thing, even every fill up of fuel. I know what the working vehicles have cost me to the penny and how much they cost per mile to run.

Non working vehicles I just keep a record of maintenance/servicing and part/labour costs.

It makes for unpleasant reading sometimes but its important to see if I'm actually making any money.

[Bren]

I think when you start doing this you start looking at everything.

Both the e60 and the vectra have had a bill each circa £1k plus other things but I am happy with this.

[Split_Pin]

I echo keeping a service record, that's something I do for all my cars.

[rob88h]

5 hours ago, DaveDorson said:

it's a proper eye opener as to just how expensive it is to keep your cars going.

[Dyslexic Viking]

Could consider it on modern as it costs me little. The others I do not want to know but since I have an extremely boring life  wasting money on old cars is among the little I have to fill my existence with so what it costs does not really matter much.

[RoverFolkUs]

I have recently, out of idle curiosity. It doesn't change my thinking of how I run the car, I just like to be organized I suppose. 

10 months/7000 miles or so of running a MK2 Focus - £294.69 repairs and servicing (parts only - NO labour etc)

When I bought it, 2x tyres were atrocious and 2x were ancient, so I was lucky that I had 4x nearly new 205/55/R16 on Focus #1 at the time to swap over (will likely swap them back, so cost £0) Had I not had those tyres probably add another £200 to that figure. 

Including new tyres, I would expect that lot to total at least £1200 at a garage which would be the end of the car for most people. Even though there's nothing major there at all. 

Lets say £1200 worth of work in a garage, that gets you a high mileage MK2 Focus that is probably due a cambelt and realistically will need a steering rack in a year or two

Surprising how it adds up, you can see why people bridge seemingly good cars!

[Back_For_More]

I just keep a file/folder of the receipts - it can go with  the car if/when I sell. I never ever dare add anything up - I'd never recover!

[chodweaver]

Yep. One for every car.

But there's no amount columns in any of them, because i might accidentally select the whole column in Excel and then see the SUM bit at the bottom, and that would ruin my enjoyment* of having a small fleet of shitters. (I sometimes note the cost of parts in a Comments column, but only so i have a record of where i bought them and to see what i can expect to pay if they need replacing again later)

I have the spreadsheets as it seems the easiest way of recording dates and mileages of oil and filter changes, tyre replacements etc. and as a record of repairs (or attempted repairs) which I'd likely forget all about otherwise. I'm also crap at keeping and organising paperwork, so this makes for a better service history that i can pass to subsequent owners, either on a memory stick or printed out.

[St.Jude]

I'm trying to with my Lada and Land Cruiser.

The rest are too far gone for it to be any use.

[AnnoyingPentium]

12 hours ago, RoverFolkUs said:

I have recently, out of idle curiosity. It doesn't change my thinking of how I run the car, I just like to be organized I suppose. 

10 months/7000 miles or so of running a MK2 Focus - £294.69 repairs and servicing (parts only - NO labour etc)

When I bought it, 2x tyres were atrocious and 2x were ancient, so I was lucky that I had 4x nearly new 205/55/R16 on Focus #1 at the time to swap over (will likely swap them back, so cost £0) Had I not had those tyres probably add another £200 to that figure. 

Including new tyres, I would expect that lot to total at least £1200 at a garage which would be the end of the car for most people. Even though there's nothing major there at all. 

Lets say £1200 worth of work in a garage, that gets you a high mileage MK2 Focus that is probably due a cambelt and realistically will need a steering rack in a year or two

Surprising how it adds up, you can see why people bridge seemingly good cars!

I took a leaf out of your book and made a spreadsheet. I have most of the paperwork in the car but since it's raining I'm not going out to get it, so some are estimates. I've had the car a year as of March and it's covered 10,000 miles with me. The air conditioning was by choice, so subtract the £47 and you're still left with the four figure sum. 

[JJ0063]

Absolutely not, why would I want to ruin my hobby by knowing how much of an expensive hobby it is?

The less I know, the better. When you look at it like that you can genuinely live by man maths and just remember purchase price and resale price. That way if you sell the car for more than you paid for it you really are in profit and don’t take in to account the amount you’ve spent on it during ownership. 
 

I never want to think about what I spend on any of my vehicles, ever. 

[J W Pepper]

I keep a A5 book for each of my cars and write in the paint codes, engine codes, parts bought and when, and any work carried out

[JJ0063]

I feel the same when it comes to MPG

 

I have seen people that religiously record every fill up, pence per litre, exact amount filled up, calculate the MPG for every tank and record it.

 

I just don’t understand why, what does it actually matter? You still need to put that fuel into the car and pay the price on the pumps.. I just feel like it must take the enjoyment out of it massively.

[J W Pepper]

12 minutes ago, JJ0063 said:

I feel the same when it comes to MPG

 

I have seen people that religiously record every fill up, pence per litre, exact amount filled up, calculate the MPG for every tank and record it.

 

I just don’t understand why, what does it actually matter? You still need to put that fuel into the car and pay the price on the pumps.. I just feel like it must take the enjoyment out of it massively.

I don't bother with writing in when I fill up and how much, just something to go with the invoices if the garage does any work, although I do a lot of work myself

[cort1977]

I do have a spreadsheet like that but don't fill in the costs religiously because I'm too lazy.  It's handy to keep the details of each car in one place though and I have set it up to track the MOT, insurance and tax status of each one.  Also the V5c reference no. can be useful for taxing online.

[SiC]

I started adding up just expenditure over a year recently. Excluding purchase price of vehicles, I got to five figures and decided I ought to stop. 

Definitely has made me re-evaluate having the cars I own and possibly reduce down a lot. Plus a spreadsheet makes the expenditure evidence too easily findable by your other half!

[DaveDorson]

1 hour ago, JJ0063 said:

Absolutely not, why would I want to ruin my hobby by knowing how much of an expensive hobby it is?

The less I know, the better. When you look at it like that you can genuinely live by man maths and just remember purchase price and resale price. That way if you sell the car for more than you paid for it you really are in profit and don’t take in to account the amount you’ve spent on it during ownership. 
 

I never want to think about what I spend on any of my vehicles, ever. 

 

To be honest it was initially so I didn't have to write a load of annoying repetitive logic apps as part of my day job, but I found it sort of interesting after costing up the re-commissioning of the black beetle so decided to make tabs for each of the fleet and update them when I buy bits for each one.

The fact of the matter is, each member of the current fleet is in a queue to get finished and will be done no matter the cost, because it's my hobby and the resale value doesn't really impact me as the likelihood of ever selling any of them is fairly low.

I've reached the point I'm not even looking for interesting new projects at the moment, until I've at least ticked off doing a few of the ones I have here.

 

[DaveDorson]

46 minutes ago, cort1977 said:

I do have a spreadsheet like that but don't fill in the costs religiously because I'm too lazy.  It's handy to keep the details of each car in one place though and I have set it up to track the MOT, insurance and tax status of each one.  Also the V5c reference no. can be useful for taxing online.

The V5 reference is a great tip actually!

[St.Jude]

1 hour ago, AnnoyingPentium said:

I took a leaf out of your book and made a spreadsheet. I have most of the paperwork in the car but since it's raining I'm not going out to get it, so some are estimates. I've had the car a year as of March and it's covered 10,000 miles with me. The air conditioning was by choice, so subtract the £47 and you're still left with the four figure sum. 

"Holy Shit"

I've spent more on injectors and fuel pipes for my Land Cruiser than you have on a whole year of motoring.

If there's any holy shit to be shat here, it's with me!