This is not a good time to be young. Student debts are vast – some figures show the average debt nearing £20,000. Jobs are thin on the ground, with 30%-plus of graduates ending up in jobs that require no degree. Real incomes are falling at some speed (something that might explain the 12% rise in sales of Heinz baked beans in the last year), with those of waiting staff and shop assistants working on commission falling, no doubt, faster than most.
But worst of all, says The Observer, “families struggling to cope with the credit crunch have started to cut back on the classic 17th-birthday gift of driving lessons”. There have been 52,000 fewer applications for provisional driving licences this year than during the same period last year – that’s a drop of 8%. The AA reports similar evidence: the number of people taking both lessons and driving tests has fallen, says spokesman Ian Crowder.
This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, given the state of our wallets (according to uSwitch we currently have less disposable income than in any year since 1997) and the fact that the average cost of learning to drive, according to The Observer, is around £1,500.
More of a surprise is the fact that it isn’t just the young who are abandoning the roads. Try driving out of London on a Friday night and back in again on a Sunday night and you’ll be amazed at the ease with which you travel. According to the RAC, road congestion has eased by 12% in the last year, while a survey from Sainsbury’s Finance tells us that the number of people planning to buy a car in the next six months is at a three-year low.
This doesn’t mean that garage forecourts are entirely deserted – the same survey claims that over six million people are in the market for a new car – but it does mean there are bargains aplenty about for buyers of second-hand cars (and who would be stupid enough to buy a new car?). Trade prices fell by 5% in July alone and, according to Glass’s Guide, are likely to fall by another 10% or more before the end of the year, due to high supply and falling demand.
And the best bargains out there? SUVs and other gas guzzlers, says the Coventry Evening Telegraph. In the wake of tax rises and record petrol prices, they’ve been being dumped at such speed that the savings on them would currently compensate buyers for many years of oil prices at $140 a barrel. But if you do rush to your nearest car supermarket to pick one up, watch out how you pay for it. According to Moneyfacts.co.uk, if you fail to shop around for a loan you could end up paying 14% over the odds for your bargain buy. And you probably shouldn’t take out a car loan anyway: cars depreciate so fast that you’ll be in auto negative equity as soon as you turn the key. If you can’t pay in cash, why not join the rest of the newly credit-crunched population and don’t buy at all?