By David Field

It was time to get my own motor. I was tired of having to beg my girlfriend every time I wanted to use the car. In all fairness to her, it was her car, she had paid for it, and for all the tax, and I had merely contributed a sixth of the insurance payments in recognition of the estimated sixth of the time that I would use the vehicle. In actuality, the process of getting clearance to have the car for an afternoon and then the fear that I felt once at the wheel, due in large part to the knowledge that the slightest scratch or mark would be found and used against for years to come, meant that more often than not, I opted for public transport, with all the delays, unpleasant travelling companions and tedious scrutinising of timetables that it entailed.

I had set my heart on a nice little Skoda. While still often remembered for their uncanny resemblance to a tin can in the 1980s, today's vehicles are substantially improved and are more or less VWs with a Czech name.

The second-hand vehicle would set me back £3,000. In addition, there was the issue of insurance, a further £300 and the purchase of a tax disc, £120 more. All in all, it was going to cost me around £3,500 more than I actually had to get the thing on the road. A savings plan was needed.

The idea of a loan did not appeal. While there were some attractive deals around I was clear that I didn't want to be spending more money than strictly necessary. I certainly was not going to go down the route of accepting the credit deals offered by garages, which are renowned for being particularly costly in terms of repayments.

For the next year I decided that I would cut out the beer and little luxuries such as takeaways and new CDs and new anything in fact. I then ploughed the extra money in to an internet savings account, which offered some incredibly good rates of interest, far better than anything seen in current accounts. Then I had a good search through my large collection of books and CDs and looked to flog everything I had online. While, in reality, this did not net me a huge sum of money, at least it made a bit more room in the flat.

It took a while, nine months in fact, but at last I had cobbled enough together to get down to my local Skoda second-hand dealer and make that purchase.

It was only after a week of driving around in blissful knowledge that I could go where I liked, when I liked, that I realised that I had forgotten one important factor in my calculations, that of petrol. At £30 a go for a full tank it quickly dawned on me that I needed to get back in to the savings habit extremely quickly.