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Well he asked my income and knew I didn't have much of a real job history, so I think he was also saving himself some time since I doubt I could've been approved for a loan. He tried getting me into a new Focus with their "new college grad" program, but even that wouldn't fly.
Hehe. Ok, that makes more sense. At least he took the time to tell you the hard truth.
I found this same thing. I admit I've never been a big driver myself, I always have worked for myself and worked from home, so the idea that I'm going to pay $23,000 for a car with 65,000 miles and it's 4 years old versus just pay the $30,000 for a new car with 18 miles on it is ludicrous to me. I don't know how long cars last now days, but it'll be a cold day in hell before I drive around a car with 100,000 miles, I would sell it if it got anywhere close to that and move on with my life. So buying a car with 65K miles to me is like buying a more-than-half-used car, the useful life of that car is already mostly shot as far as I'm concerned. I don't want to deal with its issues. How in the world someone puts that many miles on a freakin' car in 4 years is absolutely baffling. Are they commuting to another planet?! My Camaro just hit 8,000 miles and it's 6 years old. My Nissan Rogue that we mainly use is around 8,000 miles per year and that's quite a lot, but still it'll be a long time before it hits 100,000 miles and needs replacement.
In my opinion if you want to sell me a car that has 65K miles it needs to be HALF the price of a new car, at the very most, and I even think that's a rip off. I go and look up the KBB value of these cars and they're nowhere near that high, but the dealerships will sit there telling you, "Well you can save a few thousand bucks by buying this heavily used car that's only 4 years old." Uhh, gee, you know, gonna have to pass on that! I wonder if they're just trying to sell their new cars. I found the discounts mostly worthwhile on the cars with 10-30K miles, they were a good substantial discount but not a huge one. Then the ones with 60-80K miles they were trying to sell for just a few thousand less, which I'm just not having.
What a collection of terrible financial decisions.
BTW, I bought my truck last year, 25,100 miles, $12,000.
I'll drive it 100,000 past 100,000 miles before replacing it.
(I have a tow vehicle (2500) with 122k on the clock, it'll be reliable for many more years.)
What a collection of terrible financial decisions.
BTW, I bought my truck last year, 25,100 miles, $12,000.
I'll drive it 100,000 past 100,000 miles before replacing it.
(I have a tow vehicle (2500) with 122k on the clock, it'll be reliable for many more years.)
That’s a great price for a truck. I don’t personally want to drive a car with over 100,000 miles because for me that would mean a car more than 12 years old, maybe way more, and technology changes so much that I just wouldn’t have anything that old at all whether it was a computer or a phone or a car. Heck even houses I like 10-15 years old at the very most, and brand new is ideal
Meh, buying new cars right out of college is what keeps people at home with their parents. The new car money is money that could go for a down payment on a house, or toward retirement savings.
Oh, I don't know about that. My spouse and I bought a brand new car right out of college and about a month before our wedding. Initially, we rented an apartment. Nobody was living in anyone's basement, and we bought a modest home about a year later at the tender ages of twenty-three and twenty-two using just our household income. (No inheritances.) And lest you think we must be sitting under a ton of debt, let me assure you that's not the case either. We own our home outright and our cars, too. Are we unusual? Well, yeah, we probably are, but every financial situation is different.
Last edited by randomparent; 07-15-2018 at 08:15 AM..
I've always preferred new cars. Since I started earning a good salary, I was able to justify buying new because:
a) I don't buy fancy, I buy dependable (civic or corolla, generally).
b) my income was increasing pretty rapidly... ~$300 per month for a 4-year, low interest loan was (and still is) quite manageable.
c) My family is not wealthy, so growing up I had the opportunity to ride in a lot of junk-show cars that broke down, often in situations that were not at all comfortable.
Now in my mid-forties, income is not growing fast anymore, I am starting to think about trying used cars. It is a bit discouraging to see the highly dependable brands trading for $0.80 on the dollar with 50k miles, though.
A new car is not necessarily always a bad economic proposition compared to a used one, it is just that with new cars people tend to overbuy, over finance, and then get bored with them in 3 or 4 years and do it all over again. You can't do that. The problem is that cars are marketed as fashion statements rather than functional pieces of equipment so they are always tempting you to get rid of the perfectly good car that you already have and go back into (or deeper) into debt to drive around in the latest and greatest. But if you can manage the self control to buy a moderately affordable new car that you can pay off in 2 or 3 years and drive it for a decade or longer, you wont be hurting yourself nearly as bad as most people.
Oh, screw Dave Ramsey on this one. I bought a new Honda in 2003 with cash from an inheritance, and I'm still driving it now in 2018 and expect to drive it for awhile.
I wanted a new one so that I would know exactly how it had been broken in and what maintenance had been done and by whom. Given that this vehicle is still sound at almost 15 years old, I think this was a good purchase, and I would do so again.
For me, it was a good decision as all proved to be reliable and I drove them until they " dropped".
That calculus changes a lot with long-term ownership, especially for until-wheels-fall-off type folks. The two year old car that people saved on does indeed end up dying two years earlier, so they didn't really gain an advantage since they are buying another after less time.
My grandson bought a new car as soon as he got his first job out of college. I’m fine with that.
He is living at home for the next year, and will have paid off his student loans before he moves to his own place. His future is bright and he deserves a nice car for the first time in his life. His spending habits are otherwise very modest.
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