Owning a car can be an enormous strain on the bank account. Sometimes I don't think it is worth the pain that it causes my wallet and wonder what the alternatives are instead. It is not that I own a flashy vehicle, or that I am unfortunate enough to be in a high insurance bracket. Bless any young man under the age of 25 who wants to drive a car with an engine bigger than a hairdryer will need the backing of the World Bank to fund it! But having an ageing Audi from what surely must be the early 1900s still manages to break the bank.



Once I've paid the insurance, a mere thirty five quid a month (including breakdown recovery I might add!), road tax - which equates to around fifteen of my precious golden nuggets a month and a parking permit, a snip at around a pound a week; well, we're talking about fifty five quid a month before I've even put petrol in. Once you add MOT, servicing and the occasional tyre, bulb and windscreen wiper, I guess it's a bit more like eighty great British pounds. I could buy a few nice tops with that kind of cash. I don't really use the car anyway, I live in town and the kids are quite frankly too embarrassed by the state of our family wagon to ever ask for a lift.

I've toyed with the idea of ditching the trusty rust bucket in favour of busses and trains, but to be honest my hair frizzes badly in the rain and I don't like to spend four hours getting to a place that I could reach in twenty minutes if I took a car. There must be another way of propelling myself along the surface of the earth for cups of tea with far flung friends and family. Given that I rarely use the car, and the costs are slowly incurring... a grand a year before petrol, I might as well make those occasional trips in style, comfort and class in someone else's car. Here is my plan...

I'm going to get my boss to get me a car, a company car, a flashy shiny new car. I'll persuade him to get a vehicle that we could all use, for travelling to important meetings and things like that. It's important we make a good impression! Obviously being a business savvy bloke, he'll not willingly splash out on a flash set of wheels if it is going to cost either him or the company. The solution is in leasing; much more sensible than buying.

Vehicle leasing is relatively painless to arrange and is generally easier and cheaper than getting a loan for a new car. Why pay massive loan repayments every month on a car that is depreciating in value? Instead, smaller payments could be made on a top quality car that gets replaced once the lease is up. A permanently new car for less than the cost of an ageing one - that surely makes economic sense that no boss can decline.

My idea is good for the environment and the business bank account. With a pool car available for everyone to use, there is a shared insurance, only one road tax, one service, one MOT, one parking ticket, etcetera. And with a shared vehicle for business use, fewer employees will be driving to work just to use their car to go to a meeting. I am a genius; a pool car is definitely the way. I wonder if I can persuade the boss to order an Audi in flamingo pink with neon orange suede interior, ooh, and a blue fluffy steering wheel, and don't forget the dice!