Martin Lewis asks question on X which drives fans mad - what is your answer?

Money-saving expert Martin Lewis left his followers on X, formerly Twitter, puzzled with a question about profit from car sales. The topic certainly divided opinions, with people arriving at entirely different conclusions.

Mr Lewis posed the following question to his followers: "Today's Twitter Poll: How much would you have made if you...- Bought a car for £6,000- Sold it for £7,000- Re-bought it for £9,000- Sold it again for £11,000."

He provided four possible answers - nothing, £1,000, £2,000 and £3,000. The question was about how much profit the person had made, and his eventual explanation of his perspective left people questioning what profit truly is.

The most popular answer by far was £3,000, with over 50 per cent of respondents choosing this option.

Around 17 per cent chose 'nothing', nearly 17 per cent chose £1,000, and almost 10 per cent opted for £2,000. When he revealed his own answer, one reader commented: "To me it feels like £1k. It's not really relevant that it's the same car, that's the profit left after all these transactions are complete."

To which Mr Lewis responded: "How do you get that?"

Another individual commented: "Can't agree with this logic, or otherwise terribly written question (which strongly implies you are buying back the same car and having to spend an extra £3K from the original price in doing so. So doesn't make sense saying you are profiting from this transaction."

Mr Lewis responded: "Sorry that logic doesn't work. Yes you spend an extra three k, but you make an extra five k when you sell it, so you're still two k up."

So what was Martin’s explanation?

"My answer to this is £3,000. Imagine it was two separate transactions....

"a) You buy a posh watch for £6,000 then you sell it for £7,000 = £1,000 profit.

"b) Then you buy a diamond necklace for £9,000 and sell for £11,000 =£2,000 profit.

In total that’s £3,000 you’ve made. The way it is written made some think differently because it is one object and thus try and factor in a ‘loss’ because the car had gone up in value and they had to spend more to buy it.

"And I know some will say “but it was the same car, that makes it different”... so let’s do it another way. Say you start with £10,000 in your ‘car buying fund’. Buy the car you have £4,000, then sell it you have £11,000. Now you buy it back you have £2,000 and sell it you have £13,000 - again that’s £3,000 more than when you started.

"Of course you could argue, that had you not sold the car the first time and waited to sell it at £11,000 you would have made £5,000 profit not the £3,000 you did.

"So there is a ‘lost-opportunity cost’ of £2,000. If you like you can argue that emotionally you “lost out on an extra £2,000 that you could’ve have made” but you can’t subtract that from your actual profit as some have done, as you didn’t actually lose money. You still ended up with £3,000 more than you started with.

"PS As a final less relevant thought, the person who owned the car in the middle may have spent £2,000 upgrading the car which is why it went up in value - so there was no opportunity loss - this wasn’t specified so we don’t know."