My experience buying a car

So I've had a very interesting and tedious experience while buying my first car. Wanted to share incase it helps anyone else in the same position. Disclaimer; I was dumb and inexperienced, but fixed it in the end. Also, I know buying a decently-priced car as a first car is probably a bad idea to some. But I can afford it so wanted something that would last me years.

So, I went to a used car dealership on Saturday (a big, well known company) with my dad to look at some cars. I told the advisor I was looking for as cheap as possible. I immediately noticed he skipped passed the 7k cars and went to the 10k+ ones on the computer. I struggle with speaking up because of anxiety so I didn't say anything. He showed me a Vauxhall Corsa on the computer and I really liked the look of it (2019, 10k miles, 1.4L engine). So we went and took it for a test drive (my dad driving and me in the passenger, with the advisor in the back). Real nice car, really smooth. Decided to go for it.

To cut a long story short, sales people are crafty. He started showing me all the extras it could come with (warranty, something called smart protect and gard x) but because I'm stupid I didn't think to ask how much they cost. I only realised when I was looking at the receipts that were sent to my emails today. Basically, those added extras meant I'd be paying an extra 4k lol. I didn't realise that at the time, the advisor didn't tell me the price and I didn't ask (definitely always ask!!) So that was my first mistake.

I opted for PCP finance over 4 years originally and paid £500 deposit. I asked him if I paid a bigger deposit, like £4000, how much would it take the monthly payments down by. He said it would only take them down by "£20 or so every additional £1k deposit". I don't know if that's true but thinking about it, it sounds fake.

Anyway, I'd been mulling it over the past couple days and when I realised how much I'd be paying, I was filled with anxiety. I can afford a car, but I worked out that I'd be paying roughly £400 a month which I can afford but I don't want to pay that much. So I called them.

Lemme tell you, they will say ANYTHING to get you to spend more money 😅 I told the guy on the phone that I didn't want the extended warranty or the smart protect. He spouted a bunch of crap, which I know they're trained to do so I kept my cool. One thing that stuck out to me was "I wouldn't be going in debt without warranty" like my finances are any of his business 😵‍💫 eventually I got him to agree to cancel the warranty and the smart thing, begrudgingly. He kept trying to negotiate with me and I was standing firm. I then decided to cancel the finance and pay cash (debit card). I then got a bank loan with no repayments for the first 3 months and then £260 a month for 5 years. I'll be paying £3k in interest but the rate is 10% apr and it was way higher for finance so I think I made a good choice.

But yeah, moral of the story is, question everything and don't let them sell you things you don't think you'll need 😅