Keep Above
New or used
Two ways to own the same thing. Each side takes its price, what it would sell for after the years you'd keep it, its running costs, and — if it's financed — the loan's interest, and lands on a cost per year. The category chips seed the sale values from commonly cited depreciation figures; every one is an estimate you can overwrite, and no winner is ever declared.
Not counted while this is $0
Sets where it enters the depreciation curve
Not counted while this is $0
Put in what each one would cost. Nothing here is read from your budgets, and nothing is saved.
| New | Used | |
|---|---|---|
| Paid up front | — | — |
| Value lost | — | — |
| Loan interest | — | — |
| Running costs | — | — |
| Total over 5 years | — | — |
| Cost a year | — | — |
| Cost a month | — | — |
Why does one calculator work for a car and a phone alike?
Everything priced here loses value on a curve that is steep early and flatter later, and buying used means joining that curve further along — the arithmetic does not care what the item is. What changes from one kind of thing to the next is which box carries the weight: where fuel, servicing and insurance sit behind an item the running-costs figures do most of the work, and where an item costs almost nothing to run the answer is close to price minus resale. The category chips change only where the sale estimates start, never how anything is counted.
The years field does two jobs at once — it sets the divisor, and it sets how far along the curve each side has travelled by the end — so one pair of prices can land quite differently at three years and at ten. Where an item carries costs with no field of their own, registration on a vehicle or a battery on a handset, those go in the running-costs box, because a cost per year that leaves them out sits under what the item would take.
This is one of the tools built into Keep Above
Keep Above is a budgeting app where you enter your bills and income and it works out the balance you need to keep — so you can see what's safe to spend. No bank connection, no ads on your data.
New against used resolves into a cost per year across the years something is kept — which budgeting apps forecast your balance, and how far ahead.
About this calculator
How is each side counted?
One formula for both, cash or loan: the price, plus any loan interest, plus running costs over the years you'd keep it, minus what it would sell for at the end. Selling mid-loan settles the remaining balance, and if the sale wouldn't cover it the shortfall is stated as a fact.
Where do the sale estimates come from?
Picking a category seeds both sale fields from commonly cited published depreciation ranges — broad averages, marked EST., never a valuation. The used side enters the curve at its current age, which is why it alone has an age field. Type your own figure and the estimate steps aside; "Use estimate" brings it back.
What do the item pages change?
Only where the sale estimates start and the wording around them. The calculation is identical on every one of them, and any figure a chip fills in can be typed over. If what you are pricing is not one of the chips, this page takes the same inputs and leaves both sale figures to you.
What happens if I leave both sale figures at zero?
The comparison then prices each side as if it were kept until it was worth nothing: price, plus running costs across the years, with nothing coming back at the end. That is how something run into the ground reads, and it lifts both cost-per-year figures rather than one. Where only one side would really be sold on, a zero on both moves the two results relative to each other.
Why is no winner shown?
Because the figures that decide it — what a particular one would really sell for, what it would really cost to run — are estimates only you can make. The page states both results identically and leaves the call with you. Nothing is read from anywhere, nothing is saved, and nothing here is financial advice.