True Cost of Car Ownership in Singapore (My Case Study)

I bought my current ride in March 2009 and this work horse has been serving me well for the past 8 years 2 months.

Perhaps it's due to the expiring COE, it suddenly occured to me how much in fact is the total cost of my ownership of the car.

Hence I did a quick calculation to find out.

Of course due to various reasons, the calculated figure would not be 100% accurate. However it is 'more or less there' and serves as a guideline to find out the ownership cost.

1. Car price including interest: $45,000

This was the second lowest price historically for this model and I was lucky to get it at this price mainly due to two reasons.

COE price was low.
Korean won was weakening at that time.

Therefore I decided to seize the opportunity and purchased the car.

This mentality is somewhat similar to my stock investment mentality - I do not time the market. Instead I move in for the purchase once my perceived fair value for that stock has reached.

2. 10 year road tax: $7,200

3. 10 year insurance: $10,000

My insurance premium for the first few years of driving was about $1,200 per annum. Now is about $800.

4. 10 year servicing: $5,000

First three years of servicings were complimentary. After that I did the regular servicings in other workshops outside. Each servicing range from $108 - $128 depending on which package I chose. I send my car for servicing about 4 times a year.

On top of these I also went for the occasional comprehensive servicing which costs more.

5. 10 year ERP: $6,000

6. 10 year season parking: $10,800

7. 10 year petrol: $38,400

My mileage is averaging 14 - 15 km/l of petrol. And my monthly petrol bill is between $280 - $320.

8. Repair: $3,000

The car has no major issue in the first 5 years. After that I only changed 2 major components which were giving me problem - the aircon compressor and cooling coil.

Cost of both came up to about $1,200. Hopefully nothing more from now on.

9. Tyres: $5,000

4 tyres cost about $500 and I changed just about every year.

10. Misc: $2,000

I changed my rims once along with a set of new tyres for about $1,200 when my ride was still new.

To summarise the total cost of my car ownership, it costs me S$132,400 !! to use the car for a miserly ten years in Singapore.

This is enough to pay for the down payment of a condo unit.

Not that I am a strong advocate for cars. I usually take the public transport with my wife during the weekends.

However due to the nature of my job, a car has became a need, not a want in my case.