Stub Line

Thirty thousand over three years. Is that a lot? You can't answer that, and nor can any expense app that just adds up your spending. It depends on what the car's worth and how far it's gone. A number on its own explains nothing. Stub Line works in cost per kilometre instead. It takes what you paid, minus what the car's worth now, plus the fuel, the servicing, the repairs, the tyres, the insurance, the tax, and divides it all by the distance you've actually driven. That's the real figure, and it tracks how it moves year to year. When that curve starts climbing, you have the one honest signal that the car's becoming a money pit — not a hunch, a line. Every cost goes in as a receipt. Photograph it and the app reads the total, the date, and the vendor off it on your device, then asks you to check before it saves a thing. Or type it in. Fuel gets its own maths: real consumption between full tanks, and a quiet flag when it starts creeping up against the same season last year. Then there are the parts, which is where ordinary expense trackers give up. Stub Line doesn't remember "repair, 400." It remembers "right front wheel bearing, replaced at 148,000 km, this part number, lasted 61,000, warranty until this date." Ask it about a component and it shows you what's been done, what it cost, and how long it held. If something's been replaced twice in sixty thousand kilometres, it says so plainly, and leaves the diagnosis to a mechanic. When a garage quotes you for a repair, there's a screen for exactly that moment. You put in the number, and it lays your figures next to it: what the car's worth as you set it, what you've spent on repairs this past year, what this year's cost per kilometre becomes if you say yes. It won't tell you to fix it or sell it. Those are your numbers, and a car you trust is worth paying for. The other reason people keep this for years is the sale folder. Every receipt, every part number, every job assembles itself into one PDF you hand over when you sell or when you're in dispute with a garage. There's even a buyer view with the prices stripped out — the history without your budget. A car with a folder sells for more than a car without one, and the folder builds itself while you're just logging fill-ups.