I think your use case will be very similar to mine. My wife is permanently home based (Projects all overseas) and I work largely remotely with only the occasional visit to a client and almost never during peak times. Fuel and mileage are not really factors.
I'd say if you can save R5K a month regularly you won't have any issues an F90 at low mileage. Even better if you have a bit of a buffer already and keep adding to it. The costs aren't really sort of monthly like that - more like you will pay nothing for 6 months then have a 10 - 20K thing to take care of (Just as an example like diff/gearbox services, the odd bushing - eventually the EDC dampers which are big ticket items when the time eventually comes). That said, there is nothing on mine that motorplan has covered that would have bankrupted me. The only one that didn't makes sense was the light change which I felt was unnecessary when you could have done a sub-5K repair by replacing the module. Anyway they paid so I didn't complain LOL.
I am very interested to hear your UK experience some time because it was one of the places that I felt I could make home 15 or so years ago (and I experienced all the seasons over visits!). I very nearly did land something permanent there about 4 or 5 years back but Brexit ended that plan. Looking at the state of the country (at least what the media shows) I am a little relieved it all turned out this way and that I never left. I haven't become much more positive about SA's outlook. It's more that I've realised nowhere is really any better (for me personally anyway - prospects and resources vary for everyone and I know people that left dire situations in SA and have been more successful in NZ or Australia than they were here for instance). It will probably change in future but for now it is what it is.
Definitely yeah, and that's why I was thinking of the M5 because when the wife or I will use the car it will be to enjoy it. It will be used for going to the gym/dropping little one off at school but that's like 5km a day only. I already have a cushion of about R90k set aside for repairs/maintenance, will just be adding to that, and hey who knows maybe I get a gem of an M5 and then I don't have to dig too deep into it and when I sell it I will be smiling, if it goes the other way at least I am prepared.
In terms of the UK wow...where to start, let me just say thank your lucky stars you didn't come at this time! Also this is just my personal experience having come here in 2022, many others have come and made a success out of it, I take my hat off to them. It cost us over R600k to get here which we have now lost...but it is school fees and the life experience was worth it, it made us appreciate our sunny South Africa. My cousins who are all older than me (they left SA 20 years ago) painted a picture of this utopia where you can get a job so easily, buy a house so easily, grass is so green, the NHS was wonderful etc etc. And granted 20 years ago this was very much the case, the country had it's issues but fiscally it was in a very good spot back then and it everything was functioning excellently. Fast forward to 2008 and the global financial crisis and things started going downhill from there, wage growth stagnated and is still stagnating today, but cost of living is insanely high, as are asset prices. All of my cousins bought houses back then and could very comfortably do so, now though it is almost impossible for anyone who doesn't have generational wealth to get on the property ladder, least of all immigrants like myself who have no financial history here.
For example we are renting a 65sqm 2 bedroom place that to put plainly is kak, simply just kak, something you wouldn't even put the family member you can't stand in, it's old, moldy, no cupboards, neglected, stuck in the 70's, it's really just like one of those places you would look at and be like that meme of the dude saying ewwwww brother ewwwwww is the best way I can describe it, and this was the 15th place I looked at after getting here, and it was the only one willing to take us, we had to put a year up front in rent too just because of the insane demand for property in the UK, this also leads to landlords neglecting properties because they know demand is so insanely high. And we pay with all bills included R35k per month approx, and this is near Manchester...it would be double that for something similar in London areas. The owner is now selling this place as we are leaving and put it on the market for R5.8m starting...It is the same all over the country, for something remotely the same as what one is used to in middle class SA, you know yard, garage, detached, 3-4 bedroom you are looking at R12m plus. We had a 3 bedroom house in SA in a decent area, nothing fancy, and the 2 bed flat we had on the property was bigger than the place we rent here...
Then it's the cost of living...I do amateur bodybuilding so eat a lot of meat, it is SO expensive, chicken is a bit more expensive than SA, but red meat, you looking at R6-700/kg for rump etc. I got here at the worst possible time too with their record high inflation, we started out at around R18k/pm for groceries, we're now pulling around R27k/pm for groceries, it's bleeding us dry! And I am not exaggerating these figures...you can get away with buying from budget stores but then you getting unhealthy b-grade kak.
And then it's all the small quality of life things we take for granted as South African's, like being able to go and have a meal as a family, we did it once here and the bill was R4k for 4 ppl for a drink each, main and dessert, needless to say that was the first and the last time. You looking at R500-600 per pizza if you try get takeaways. We rather just made our own food. Granted my experience is skewed because my wife and I earn in US dollar, so I am constantly comparing dollars to pounds to rands and I am trapped in the mentality of "This would have cost Rxx in SA" so maybe it would have been different had we been earning local currency.
This is where I come back to asset prices...the average family home here is £275000 for a semi-detached 3 bedroom place around 80-90sqm. Currently house prices are 9 times annual average salary (my data might be a bit incorrect by now but this was when I last checked) and this is without considering the insanely high cost of living. So for the average family, so say even if you are earning £70000 a year between the 2 of you which is higher than the average, owning anything other than a tiny hovel is a dream, because one can just never save enough to get a deposit, and the asset prices inflate at such a tempo that by the time you have a deposit the goal post is moved again. If we had stayed here we would have NEVER owned a decent house. Look if you come over as a specialist doctor or something highly qualified then things would be different, but then consider one's lifestyle in SA then in comparison. £70000 sounds like a lot but once all the deductions go off there's not much left at the end of the day and that's with ZERO luxuries.
And then the healthcare...lets hope the NHI never gets implemented in SA because the NHS here is such an abortion, you can NEVER get a doctors appointment when you need one, you must call at 8am and by the time you get through you're number 95 in the queue. And when you actually do get to see a doctor it's for 15min and if you try discuss a second problem they say "no no no, you were booked for one ailment, if you want to discuss a second thing you need to make a double booking". And then referral times if you have to see a specialist.... For example my wife has kidney issues which were diagnosed here in 2022, she got a referral back then to a nephrologist...she is STILL waiting. I buggered my knee up when sprinting for cardio in 2022, I got a referral in Jan 2023 from the doc to see a physio...literally only got seen in Feb 2024. We really took our medical aid for granted in SA.
My wife started suffering with depression too from being here because all her family are in SA, and the lifestyle here is very insular, you're stuck at home most of the year, we are used to being outside, braais etc etc. The culture is also SO different if you don't integrate (I always say it might as well be Japan it is that different), and with us working at home we never really had to integrate into the local communities etc. Not saying the culture difference is a good or a bad thing, just so different to what we are used to back home, i'll use an example like that unsaid respect of calling older people Uncle or Auntie out of respect in SA, here that is just absent. The kids are also just on another level...demons incarnate compared to our kids back in SA.
We were going to stay until citizenship via ancestry visa (6 years) but we got to a stage between my wifes depression and me looking at the financial writing on the wall...we would never be able to own any house other than a box in our lifetime, there is no decent health care, cost of living is INSANE compared to SA, so we made the decision to head back, in SA we can buy a decent place in the next 3 to 4 years and have a much better quality of life. It makes me think of a saying someone said once can't put my finger on who...but it was "Why live like a poor person in North if you can live like a King in the South"
Please let me know if you have any other questions about the UK, this is just the tip of the iceberg!
. Better still, go read his very detailed threads on his experiences of ownership of F10 & G90 M5's. Turns out Llew and I have had similar ownership choices, right down to colours (alpine white f10 & marina bay blue g90). Can't go wrong with an M5, it's so much more car than you can imagine! If well maintained, they are amazing cars. I had my f10 for 7 years with little to no issues - motor plan covered front & rear suspension bushes in year 6. G90 has had the coolant tank replaced but all else is pretty low maintenance, especially if in plan.
