Exactly. I can’t afford to fix a car if it breaks down means you probably cannot afford new car payment (especially in 2025) and the maintenance to keep it from breaking down.
And to that point, I am so glad our new cars are 2023s and an early 2024. With the reliability of new cars today, I’d rather take chance on a used car a couple of years old or, at worst, one that has been repoed after a month or two to get the benefit of the depreciation of driving it off of the lot.
If anything else is a used car, then yes; however, if anything else is no car & public transit that not only limits where one can live &/or work but it would require many people to move, potentially on top of moving costs, which ain’t cheap; especially if one had a good job but is now in a lesser paying one due to layoff.
There is a bus near where I live & one near where I work; however, they are not the same route & it would take me hours each way & a minimum or three to four buses to commute that way.
With used cars holding value as well as they are, especially now with tariff stupidity added, you may find you can buy a new [whatever] for a lower monthly payment on a 7-year loan than you can a somewhat cheaper 3-year old [same whatever] on the 4-year loan which is all the duration your lender will give you on a 3yo used car.
In the American culture, cars are way more than transportation. They are our identity.
Only if you choose to buy into that nonsense.
Another addition to the above excellent point - Covid seriously boosted the cost of good condition used vehicles. It’s down a bit now, but still much higher in years past. A personal example, we recently had offers for the 2007 Toyota Rav4 with over 140k miles of $4-4.5k. Again, almost twenty years old and over 140k miles. Still far cheaper than a new car, 100%, but with all the above pressures, people who aren’t doing the turn over every two years are holding onto their vehicles longer and selling them higher. Most of the deals out there that are “steals” or “bargains” - well, you may well be getting what you paid for.
The pretty little souped up four wheel drive says ‘I’m a fun guy who can show you an exciting time.’.
A normal car says ‘Those guys are obviously crazy.’.
Either way, it says something about you. You are what you drive.
I assure you, I’m nowhere near as cool as my car.
I have been in the OP situation (and I can’t say I like the sneering condescension….). It’s partly been because the old car no longer fits the family needs for some reason or another. Or it’s getting to the point where maintenance will become an issue. As long as the monthly payment stays on budget, who cares, right? /s
Another factor is that my wife at the time liked to trade in cars when the ashtrays got full.
Three thoughts:
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How much car culture rules varies tremendously depending on where you live, your age, and your SES. In many places no, and in many other places, absolutely yes.
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Any given individual can choose to not buy into that nonsense. But if they’re in a place and status where everyone else does buy in, they’ll find their social status as accorded by their peers takes a big hit.
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The SDMB is turning into a group of geezers, many of whom are lower middle class to slowly starving on social security. Others are not. I think there’s room for plenty of mutual incomprehension just here, much less when we each try to map our personal circumstances onto the larger world out there.
The people I’m talking about are not ones that have needs to fill like seating a family of 5 or great gas mileage and their old car doesn’t suffice. I’m talking about people who say they need a brand new Audi to deliver DoorDash or a 2025 Chevy Silverado ZR2 but what they use their car for would be satified with a six-year old Honda.
There are many people throughout history who did / do spend their take home pay the day they got it then be broke until next payday.
This car thing the OP is wrapped up about is just a modern extension of that.
The idiom “money burning a hole in your pocket” exists for a reason.
Many people only work to immediately spend; any other way is seen as folly beyond their comprehension.
Sometimes, it truly is an immediate cash flow issue. If you can’t afford 400 a month, but could manage 250 a month, yes it’s a bad decision in the long term, but might keep you afloat right now.
My in-laws leased a car.
A month or two before the lease was ending (and we asked what the buyout amount was; it was as much as the car would have cost new - they got SCREWED), they leased another new one. The payoff amount on the not-terribly-old car was rolled into the cost of the new one.
Note that they did this without consulting the family members who were actually PAYING for the damn cars. Nor did they ever show us the lease paperwork for the first one - maybe the figure my MIL quoted me was indeed the original purchase price. We had actually thought about purchasing it, either for ourselves or them, but they jumped the gun.
I think there’s some perception of “need”, plus the thrill of a new vehicle, and “worry about it tomorrow”. Plus, yes, near-criminal lack of financial savvy.
It didn’t cost the in-laws much at all, so why worry. And they truly did need some kind of transportation.
When the second lease was expiring, the family basically told them “no new car. Do that again, and we will not pay”. They needed to stop driving then anyway.
First place it was a Honda and one of the cheaper models (Fit) and it was the clothes I always wear. Any he knew.
That is true for some people, but it definitely was not the case for Duane. He was just stupid when it came to money.
I’ll just say that, when I did the math, to determine whether it was better to lease, finance, or buy outright - even if we would end up getting a new car in a few years - financing made the most sense.
If you buy outright then you’re sparing yourself interest. But, on the other hand, you’re losing a chunk of cash that could be invested and growing at a compound rate.
The lease might say that it’s cheaper during the given time period (looking at monthly payments) but that might not prove true when you do the math - e.g. because there’s a mandatory up-front payment or because you recoup some of your money when you go to resell, or if they’re requiring 2 years and you’re thinking more like 5 years.
That all said, while the specific numbers at the specific moment, with the overall future outlook of the stock market looking just so, that we bought calculated out to a zero-down loan being the best option for our timeframe, it really wasn’t a huge difference, regardless of which path we would have chosen.
Otherwise, yes, we should all buy a small, reasonable hatchback, drive without air conditioning, remove any unnecessary creature comforts, and run the vehicle into the ground as slowly as possible. Nearly every other option for nearly every person is less than perfectly rational. But that’s not what nearly anyone does, so I don’t know that there’s much value in taking the pure rationalist outlook.
I misread the thread title as cats.
I’m driving an 2002 Saturn with over 192K miles. I have the cheapest insurance for $40 a month and will drive it until it explodes. Luckily I don’t even drive 100 miles a month anymore.
Jalopnik has an article that cites a bunch of other sources, that are relevant to this discussion. A big part of the issue is that cars keep getting more expensive. Some takeaways:
- 17% of people who finance new cars have monthly payments over $1000
- only 2.4% did 10 years ago
- 53% bought an SUV
- 36% bought a truck
- average loan is $42k at 6.8%
- 22% of all loans are 7 years
- 36% of all loans are 6 years
Renting near convenient public transit is often more expensive than renting away from transit. Using transit might still come cheaper than owning a car, but the difference may not be too much. And as you say, using inconvenient transit costs time.
And anecdote. 2002 to 2004 I had an $800/month car payment ($1400 in today’s money). That was really painful, and I just can’t imagine dragging that out for 7 years, no matter how much I wanted the car.
It was a 24 month loan at 0.49%, and I just had to keep reminding myself that at that rate I was ahead keeping the money invested instead of paying cash.