I’m 51 and have lived in a very rural area of west-central Ohio for many decades. (Same climate as you, I assume.) I’ve never had an AWD vehicle. In addition, I have never purchased a new car, nor have I made a car payment. Ever. In my whole life. I’ve owned dozens of vehicles, the most expensive being around $6K.
Even if you thought you “needed” an AWD vehicle, there’s no reason to purchase a new one.
Since I grew up where everything shuts down when it snows, I did not grow up driving in snow. I learned how in an AWD vehicle, and I’m not going to learn how again. I want the AWD more to help me avoid the idiots who think they don’t need to learn how to drive in the snow than to just go faster.
As for not needing a new vehicle, you misunderstand the point of living paycheck to paycheck. Monthly car payments are a lot less than the cost of catastrophic car repairs. I know this from the used cars I have owned in the past. If I didn’t have a monthly car payment, that money would not be used for savings, but for other debts less crucial than a car.
The paycheck-to-paycheck mentality in a nutshell.
I can only guess you’ve never actually had the problem.
Ruken is correct: you have succumbed to the paycheck-to-paycheck mentality. With all due respect, you justify things in your head that are not objectively defensible, e.g. you can’t learn to drive a non-AWD vehicle :dubious: , and that a brand new car is somehow cheaper to own and maintain than a used car. Heck, it’s been shown time and time again that a 3 or 4 year old car is much cheaper to own than a brand new car.
When I was making seven-whatever an hour ten years ago, sure.
What are you doing with those less crucial debts now? When your car is finally paid off, you won’t have money to save because these debts will have been increasing for 22 months.
Ultimately, these are all still your choices. People around you own used cars, and cars without AWD, there’s no concrete reason you couldn’t do the same. Anyway, half way through its 10 year useful life, it will be a 5 year old used car, with all the problems of a used car, that you’re claiming to avoid by buying new.
This type of decision making also gets people to make decisions like renting a TV, or couch, because they can’t save enough money to pay for it outright. They’ll pay $20 a week for years to own something worth $500, instead of saving that money for 6 months and never paying another dime.
The difference between buying a new car and buying a five year old car is that if I buy the car new I know it will be maintained and I will know everything that has happened to it… which might have something to do with my my vehicles lasting 15-20 years with decent reliability.
A used car may or may not have been properly maintained. Personally, I wouldn’t be very secure in my ability to make that determination.
This being all academic at the moment - when I bought my current vehicles the household had the income to purchase new and handle the payments without a problem, that is, we were paying the bills without problem AND still had money to save every week. Since then, I’ve put money into maintaining and fixing what I have. With some luck, I might get another 5-10 years out of them at which point I’ll have to see what my options are.
Ok, I see. That kind of sucks then. Nothing you can do about it?
I’m sorry, but I don’t agree. Everybody knows that it’s possible to do better than the situation they are currently in. If they’ve ever seen one movie or TV show. “I didn’t know I could do anything” is not an excuse anymore.
Actually DOING something, yeah, it’s hard. But just knowing about it? Trivial.
There is lots of psychology to this, and humans are not always rational actors (see behavioral economics). I can totally understand how it is much less stressful to buy a new car you can rely on, which is under warranty for several years, and is very unlikely to have surprise expenses. This is similar to the argument of paying off your smallest debt first, because the psychological boost of having one less creditor is a great motivator to keep going. That’s despite paying down the highest interest rate debt being the best option to save money.
A 5 year old car might be cheaper, but when it needs a new transmission at 80,000 miles because the first owner liked to practice J-turns, then it doesn’t seem as cheap. Also, most Subarus hold their value pretty well (still, 25-30% depreciation in 3 years is a lot of money). Buying-the-cheapest thinking leads to everybody driving a used Chevy Spark, and is also an aspect of the mentality that people on tight budgets aren’t allowed to have nice things.
Lots of these posts remind me of weight loss threads “it’s easy to loose weight, just stop eating as much” compared to “it’s easy to stop being poor, just spend less money, or earn more.” That’s why there are no fat people and no poor people.
FWIW, a gently used car is still pretty reliable and doesn’t have expensive maintenance costs. A car that is about 3-4 years old with under 60k miles can be 30-50% less than the cost of a new vehicle.
Also as far as car repairs, if you find a good mechanic on craiglist (which may not be easy if you live in a rural area) and buy your own parts at places like autozone, you can save quite a bit on car repairs. Generally it’ll only costs 1/3 or less what it would cost in a shop.
It’s a more common problem than one might think, and the answer, usually, is no. At least it’s not a cross-border custody battle. Thoseare really ugly.
To everyone that says a used car is just as good as a new one are missing the point that everyone doesn’t know about cars. I’m one of them. While it may be easy for some of you to hear a sound or notice something just not right and are able to diagnose and fix it yourself or tell the mechanic what’s wrong. For people like me, it’s a trip to mechanic, paying for an inspection, paying for rental car and waiting until he/she has time to fix it at an unknown price for which I may or may not have readily available. Versus having a new car with an extended warranty that covers almost any repair for a $0 fee and free car rental.
I once bought a lot of 4-5 computers for $80 from a couple that would keep buying a new one when theirs got infected with virus. I wiped all the hard drives and frankensteined the parts to make two computers that were better than new. But ask me to diagnose and fix a car and I’m completely lost.
Edit: About a month ago, the shift button on my car popped out and I had couldn’t get the car out of park to take to the dealer. Since it’s new, I called for road service and had planned to have it towed. The tow driver showed me how to manipulate the button inside the shifter so I could drive it to the dealership. Repair free, ride to and from home free. Total cost to me $0.
I once saw a teenager with his Mom, bring in a fancy gaming computer to Geek Squad to have a DVD drive installed. I wanted to tell him I could do it for free in less than 5 minutes in the parking lot, but I kept my mouth shut. When it comes to cars, I’m that kid! The way I see it, despite people telling me how easy it is to do things, I’m driving a multi-thousand pound machine that could not only kill me, but someone else if I don’t fix it right!
While it saddens me that it’s a common problem, I’ve known women who didn’t get child support because they didn’t want to burden the dads, or it’s too much trouble to file paperwork, or because they didn’t think the father owed them anything. I, myself, don’t understand that type of thinking, especially since I pay child support myself.
The thing is that with a used car you can look up reliability information, and only buy from someone who keeps good records. Back when I was a kid a two year old car might be junk, but my nine year old Prius has had nothing wear out.
The best reason to buy a new car is for the safety features, but the paycheck to paycheck person isn’t going to be able to afford the higher level trim giving them anyhow.
Firstly, there are two kinds of living paycheck to paycheck.
If you make any kind if decent money and you are living paycheck to paycheck then it’s probably your spending habits.
I used to make 53k gross. I supported myself and 5 others (wife, two kids and her elderly parents) and still managed a meager 4k In savings each year. I owned and maintained 3 cars, one was only a couple years old. I lived in a fairly nice 4 bedroom house on 5 acres.
I was a government employee during a shutdown and no I did not get any back pay. Simply lost two weeks work and pay and that killed most of what I would have saved that year and had me paycheck to paycheck for about three months.
Now if you’re poor that’s another story entirely.
By definition you really can’t have bad spending “habits” because you don’t have money to spend. It’s part of why many poor people will buy something dumb as soon as they have a little bit of money. They feel it’s the only opportunity they will have to ever get anything.
If they hold on to it , it will only serve to mitigate some of the deficit their basic needs create.
Will a budget help, absolutely not, except to show that they are in fact in a constant deficit and likely only get by with emergency help from others which can’t be reliably budgeted for.
Everything available to them is just another trap.
As we all know it takes money to make money, well, it also often costs money to save money.
The only housing choices are likely to cost a fortune to heat or cool with the 35+ year old appliances and lack of adequate insulation.
Maybe do without heat for a few years to get a down payment on a nice house that will actually cost the same or less to live in if they could just get to that point.
Choice of cars usually comes down to what can be bought with a $1500 tax return. Then hoping it can be driven into the ground til next year because they won’t be able to afford to maintain it properly. Even making a repair yourself like I do will be a push just to afford parts. It may be the only car for a family so it’s probably going to have to be big and bad on gas so they can all cram into it.
Then there’s those payday loans. Do we think people get them because they are utterly stupid? No, they get them because they have $10 and that pos car needs a $120 alternator by tomorrow or they won’t be able to get to work. They already ruined their credit because they maxed out the $500 limit 22percent apr credit card on the last repair then had to make the choice of either paying interest only for the 6th month in a row or buying enough gas to go to work.
Well, make more money then. That usually requires an education. Problem is things are so tight that’s unlikely to work out.
It’s pretty easy to get funding for , especially if you’re poor. Then they get enrolled but the funding that was supposed to pay for books won’t be there until two weeks after classes start. Does noone see a problem here… guess they’ll have to get a payday loan to buy half the books with and muddle through the easier classes for two weeks without them. Maybe they can catch up their grade after that. They will need at least a 90 on everything because they’ve already lost 20 percent of their grade though.
Then that car breaks down again … Missed a quiz… Failed the class …now they’re below the gpa or the credit hours required for the funding.
Guess they aren’t coming back next semester.
…welcome to the boards Littleman, great first post.
Oh, then people judge the TV or game system they bought, without realizing that $300 is probably 4 people’s entire entertainment and vacation budget for a year or two.
Or you know they could have all went to the movies once or twice those two years for the same money.
Been there and back a couple times.