Keep Above
Buy or hire the trailer
A trailer is the classic buy-or-hire thing: owned, it sits ready and costs registration and tyres; hired, it costs a fee every time you tow. This calculator counts both ways over the same years and the same uses a year — owning's price, upkeep and eventual sale against hiring's per-hire fee and extras — and lands each on a cost per year and per use, with the break-even stated as a fact. No winner is declared.
Not counted while this is $0
After 5 years
Delivery, membership, deposits — not counted while $0
Put in what buying one would cost, and what one hire would cost. Nothing here is read from your accounts, and nothing is saved.
| Owning | Hiring | |
|---|---|---|
| Paid up front | — | — |
| Value lost | — | — |
| Hire fees | — | — |
| Other costs | — | — |
| Total over 5 years | — | — |
| Cost a year | — | — |
| Cost a use | — | — |
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.
About this calculator
What counts as upkeep for a trailer?
Whatever a year of ownership would take whether or not it gets used — registration where it applies, insurance, tyres and lights as they age, and storage if it would occupy paid space. The box takes a single yearly figure; at $0 it simply isn't counted.
What would one hire include here?
Whatever a single hire actually costs door to door — the day rate, and any per-hire extras a depot charges. Yearly costs that don't attach to a single hire, like a membership, belong in the extras-a-year box instead. Bonds that come back aren't a cost and stay out.
What is the crossing point?
The uses a year at which the two totals would match, over the years you set — a position in the arithmetic, nothing more. When one side's structure makes a match impossible (owning nets to nothing, or hiring's fixed extras alone pass owning's total), the page says so instead of printing a number.