Car ownership is now a luxury

[Anonymous]

This thread is making me fall in love all over again with my 2010 Toyota truck. There are Reddit forums dedicated to my particular model and people routinely -- with basic maintenance -- see 280,000 - 300,000 miles.

Occasionally I envy the newer car features my friends and family enjoy. But not enough to incur a $1,400/month loan payment (3 years, $5000 down, $50k cost for a new Toyota of the same model) plus $300/month insurance vs. the $60/month I pay now.

I'm not the kind of girl who has $50k sitting around btw, so I'd have to finance

[Anonymous]

We have two paid off cars but we also have a 16 year old boy. So, we pay $3200 in insurance annually. At least we don’t have car payments on top of that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Cars are really not that expensive if you don’t borrow money to buy one you can’t afford. My two cars only cost around $1,000 per month combined, including maintenance, taxes, liability only insurance, and fuel. Save money to buy it in cash and don’t take loans for cars.

it's rather dumb to have liability only insurance if the car is worth $20K+ still

But yes, pay cash or work towards that. And never take a car loan for more than 3-4 years. You cannot afford the car if you can't do it that way

No it is not dumb to have liability only insurance given you have the savings to replace the car with cash if it is totaled. The expected value of your insurance claims (on average) must be less than your premiums in order for the insurance company to make money. So it’s better to self insure if you can afford it.

[Anonymous]

Make sure you have high liability limits and all the uninsured motorist coverage you can get. Going to be a huge increase in uninsured drivers soon and it's already pretty bad.

[Anonymous]

Americans spend way more on cars than they think. It’s been this way for a very long time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:yup....avg price of new car this year at $50K. If you live in Fairfax County, you will pay 6% car tax, the crazy insurance rates, etc which essentially has made new car purchases for the wealth. No different now vs homes, and other high price items where MC "realistic and best value" route is purchasing a used car. Hoping EVs will lower new car price, but EV prices likely contributing to the inflation here.

Every EV is priced higher than it's gas powered equivalent. You may save on the operational and maintenance costs, but the up front costs of EVs are clearly higher.

A Prius and a Camry cost the same up front. But you have to keep putting money in the Camry to drive it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:yup....avg price of new car this year at $50K. If you live in Fairfax County, you will pay 6% car tax, the crazy insurance rates, etc which essentially has made new car purchases for the wealth. No different now vs homes, and other high price items where MC "realistic and best value" route is purchasing a used car. Hoping EVs will lower new car price, but EV prices likely contributing to the inflation here.

Every EV is priced higher than it's gas powered equivalent. You may save on the operational and maintenance costs, but the up front costs of EVs are clearly higher.

A Prius and a Camry cost the same up front. But you have to keep putting money in the Camry to drive it.

Yes and a Camry is much more space for a family of 3-4 versus a Prius. But it's always been a given that you pay more upfront for an EV/hybrid and then experience less maintenance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:yup....avg price of new car this year at $50K. If you live in Fairfax County, you will pay 6% car tax, the crazy insurance rates, etc which essentially has made new car purchases for the wealth. No different now vs homes, and other high price items where MC "realistic and best value" route is purchasing a used car. Hoping EVs will lower new car price, but EV prices likely contributing to the inflation here.

Every EV is priced higher than it's gas powered equivalent. You may save on the operational and maintenance costs, but the up front costs of EVs are clearly higher.

A Prius and a Camry cost the same up front. But you have to keep putting money in the Camry to drive it.

You also have to keep putting money in the Prius.

[Anonymous]

Okay where are you guys finding all these fantastic used cars that last forever? Please help a fella here. I bought a used 2020 Corolla 2 years ago and it's been issues after issues. I don't have any skills to fix cars. My mechanic is reasonable in cost. Maybe I am unlucky, but it has not been cheap owning this car.

Next time, how do I find a good used car? I bought mine from a Toyota dealership as a certified pre owned. Unfortunately within a year of ownership everything started unraveling. And forget about the extra warranty they sell you. It's a scam because suddenly everything is "wear and tear" so not covered.

I'll just find the cheapest new car I can find next time and save myself some headache

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is worse in my opinion is the normalization of $500+/month car payment. I don't care how much you make a month, $500/month just for the car note is wild.

Not nearly as wild as $1000/mo car insurance.

who pays $12K/year for car insurance for one car?!?!?!

For a family! Don’t be a dunce

We have 2 cars, one of them new, and the other is driven by a teen. Our insurance doesn’t cost anywhere near that. We live in NoVA. YMMV if you live in MD where there are more scary drivers and lots of crime.

[Anonymous]

I’ve been oddly lucky with the used car market. I’m 51 and have never bought a new car and have never had major problems. The 2015 Dodge I currently own had to go to a mechanic after I bought it from a dealership but they were able to sort out the issue.

I don’t do anything special with my car purchases. But, we do pay cash and never have car payments. I know people get screwed over with used cars at times and I’d be furious.

[Anonymous]

Last year I thought I would be clever and frugal and bought a used Kia Telluride, 5 years old. It was wonderful until about 10 months into it (and having been quite vigilant about maintenance and oil changes) that a major problem came along. Piston rings allowing oil to leak into combustion chambers, burned the oil dry, with ZERO warning or indication this was happening. No warning lights at all, just bone dry with knocking sound. The drivetrain warranty didn’t transfer and new engine would have cost 10k. Having no time to waste and not wanting to throw 10k into used car, I sold it for a lot less than I bought it for, and bought a new smaller Toyota.

However, as a family, we are maintaining and holding onto our older cars that we bought new 10 years ish ago. Newer cars seem to have more problems. Fingers crossed for the one I just bought.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:yup....avg price of new car this year at $50K. If you live in Fairfax County, you will pay 6% car tax, the crazy insurance rates, etc which essentially has made new car purchases for the wealth. No different now vs homes, and other high price items where MC "realistic and best value" route is purchasing a used car. Hoping EVs will lower new car price, but EV prices likely contributing to the inflation here.

Every EV is priced higher than it's gas powered equivalent. You may save on the operational and maintenance costs, but the up front costs of EVs are clearly higher.

For now maybe, but Canada has let in BYD which is the #1 EV manufacturer in the world. You can get two BYDs for the price of 1 Tesla.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Americans spend way more on cars than they think. It’s been this way for a very long time.

+1 I'm always shocked to talk to families who complain that they have no money to send their kids anywhere other than community college or to afford health care expenses, but they have a $60K SUV or minivan and ATVs and motorcycles to play around with.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Okay where are you guys finding all these fantastic used cars that last forever? Please help a fella here. I bought a used 2020 Corolla 2 years ago and it's been issues after issues. I don't have any skills to fix cars. My mechanic is reasonable in cost. Maybe I am unlucky, but it has not been cheap owning this car.

Next time, how do I find a good used car? I bought mine from a Toyota dealership as a certified pre owned. Unfortunately within a year of ownership everything started unraveling. And forget about the extra warranty they sell you. It's a scam because suddenly everything is "wear and tear" so not covered.

I'll just find the cheapest new car I can find next time and save myself some headache

We drive these old cars, but we purchased them new. That way you know what you are getting.

Drove a 2010 Acura MDX for 12+ years. It got essentially a rebuilt engine at 6 years old/65Kmiles (when Honda/acura had major issues), all paid for by Acura (I got a rental car while work was done--took 2 week). I drove it until 125K, then decided we didn't need that vehicle. So we sold it for $12K (Car Max---could have gotten more with self sale) It would have easily gone another 75-100K, but we no longer needed that vehicle (downsized to a 1 car family in the city).
So I paid ~$40K for the vehicle, and 12 years later got $12K. And it had some body dents that would have taken me $3K to fix. So I used a car for 125K miles, and got over 25% of what I paid for it back. My insurance was lower because it was older and it was a great safe car Only issue was the engine and I got that fixed within 2 months of the first signs (manager knew I wasn't taking no for an answer one the issue started, I knew about the issues)

But even if you financed for 5 years, I had 7 years to save my car payment and with the 12K could have had $35K+ to put towards a new car when I sold.