Bangernomics and its joys

No doubt many of you watched that chap Eddie Hobbs hamming it up to the embarrassed-looking audience penned in like sheep for the filming of his Thirty Ways To Blow Your Cash Like A Drunken Sailor programme.

Sad to confess, I did too.

Not because I need his advice on what to do with my SSIA - it's already blown a barely-perceptible chunk out of the side of my mortgage - but because I was trying to work out what, exactly, he thinks he is?

Is he putting himself forward as an economist? Or does he think he's a stand-up comedian? Or both? Sadly, putting on a ridiculous accent and passing off the blindingly obvious as financial astuteness does not make it so.

Still, he did make one point that piqued my interest. Seems 100,000 of you - the "you" in this case being the mass of idiots known as the general public rather than "you", the hugely enlightened, intelligent and stunningly attractive regular readers of this column - plan to blow their SSIAs on new cars. Salesmen all over the country must be creasing their cheap suits in anticipation.

The Irish Times advertising department won't thank me for this, but that way lies madness. The adage about the fool and his money is nowhere more applicable than on the killing floor of a new car dealership.

It never ceases to amaze me how anyone who can have the financial astuteness to amass enough money to be in a position to buy a new car can then show such flawed judgment by actually going ahead and doing so.

The simple fact is this - once you've driven it off the lot, the average new car depreciates as quickly as a Boeing 747 plummeting towards the sea after its wings have fallen off in midflight.

Just bought a car worth over €60,000? Congratulations. Your SSIA has been chewed up and spat out by the depreciation monster.

Essentially, you are paying thousands and thousands of euro needlessly, just so you can swan past Fiachra three doors down in your new 07-plated car, sneering at him and his 06. It boils down to a triumph of unbridled egotism over common sense.

Me, I'm a fan of bangernomics, the art of thumbing one's nose at the regplate Mafia and going second-hand. There's great joy in buying reliable old cars for a fraction of the price of new ones, huge satisfaction in sourcing still-great cars that have dived so deep into the depreciation trough they'd need to be fitted with a bumper-mounted exploration drill to go any further.

One of the great things about the bangernomics philosophy is that you can afford a far better car than you would be able to choose if you were buying new, or nearly new. Sadly, space prevents me from delving into the actual process of buying a second-hand car. That's a whole new world of pain.

But if you really have your heart set on a new car, be my guest. You are entirely within your rights to dismiss this as the ranting of an envious and penniless journalist before flinging it out of the window. (Probably not such a good idea if you are reading it on a computer screen, mind.)

After all, somebody has to buy new cars in order for the rest of us to profit from their profligacy.

May I suggest a Saab 9-3 Sports Estate, BMW 325i Touring or Audi S6 Avant? Fine cars, all three of them.

Do me a favour though, and look after it carefully. I may want to buy it in a decade or so.