Cost per mile, cost of ownership, value, loan or lease

Cost of ownership

Everything you paid in the range (fuel and charging, maintenance and expenses) over the distance the odometer says you drove.

When the last odometer reading comes before the range ends, ≈ marks the distance on past it at your pace, as the costs run to the range’s end. The fuel or charging that distance would take counts in the cost per mile, at each car’s own cost per mile, not in the total.

Fuel counts every fill-up, the first one too (fuel economy and fuel cost per mile start after it).

With a purchase price set, it can include the value lost, or show the money paid alone. The value lost (depreciation) is drawn hatched, since it isn’t money paid until you sell.

A car loan’s payments then count their interest only, since the value lost already counts what the car cost, and none of them until the loan is set up under Loan & lease.

A ring chart shows how it splits, each kind in its own color (the same in the month-by-month bars and the PDFs). Expenses by kind follows one kind over time: what it costs a month, how its amount has moved and who it was paid to.

History’s Costs filter lists maintenance and expenses together.

Loan or lease

Garage → Edit → Loan or lease (once it’s set up, Stats → Loan & lease too). Enter the first payment, how many there are and the monthly amount, and it shows the payments made and left and the payoff date.

• For a loan, add the amount financed (and the rate, or it’s worked out from the payment) for what you still owe, the interest paid and the interest to come.
• For a lease, the miles a year allowed and the odometer at the start, to see where you’ll end up against the allowance.

It can add each payment to your expenses on its date (a repeating payment you already have then hands over to it), or leave them to you, with a repeat stopping at the last payment.

Extra payments, and a payoff quote

Extra principal you log as a loan expense comes off the balance on the day you paid it, so later payments carry less interest and it’s paid off sooner.

When you log the payments yourself, a one-off payment over the amount in a month with no other is that month’s payment, and only the part above it is extra. When the month before had none, it’s the part above two payments: a missed one caught up.

A payoff quote from your lender (the amount to pay it off on a day) makes the balance exact: it goes on from the latest one with interest by the day and each payment and extra since.

In Stats → Loan & lease, Interest and principal shows what’s been paid and what’s left of each and splits each year’s payments between them. Pay extra? shows what more a month, a 13th payment a year or a lump sum would save in time and interest.

Value and depreciation

Garage → Edit → Value & depreciation (or, the first time, Stats → Costs → Add the purchase price; then Stats → Value): enter what you paid for the car (before tax and fees) and when. Then add a value check now and then: a Kelley Blue Book or Edmunds estimate, or a dealer’s offer.

Between them the value goes in a straight line. After the last one it follows a typical curve (about 20% lost in the first year, 15% a year to the fifth, 10% a year after), always marked as an estimate, or holds still if you turn that off. MileWorks looks nothing up: the values are yours.

Stats → Value shows what it’s worth now, what it has lost (in all, a month and per mile), its value over time and, with a loan, your equity: what it’s worth less what you still owe. When you sell it (or trade it in), the sale price closes it out.