Buy the car you can afford. If you can’t buy it outright or make a significant down payment (20-30%), don’t take out a loan, look for a cheaper option. Those interest rates are insane, I’m amazed how anyone would accept them.
Sure. But if they can’t afford the loans they can’t afford the car, either. No one really needs a $40k new car, anyone could get by with a $2000 used beater.
Not really. This is another thing that falls neatly into Boots Theory.
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. … A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. … But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness.
A new car, well taken care of, will support a driver for a decade or more. A used car, especially a cheap used car, will have problems you don’t know about and you can safely assume the previous owner did not properly care for it if not outright abused it, that will be true more often than it isn’t.
Unless that $2000 used beater has major issues (and most do at that price these days) and you don’t have the cash to fix them. Then you have a $2000 pile of crap and you still need a car. No, not everyone needs an expensive car, but sometimes there’s a good reason to buy something that requires payments.
You have the option of not buying one if you cant afford it.
And there are some used cars around the 2-5k€ pricepoint if you really need one i guess.
Edit: my main point was that it always shocks me to have such a car dependence in the US that you’d even have to go into debt. I am not saying Americans should just not buy cars…
You have the option of not buying one if you cant afford it.
Not really, depending on where you are.
When I was barely above broke out of college, I had to buy a shit box just to be able to go to work, because the only job I could find in my field was >20 mi from where I lived and had no public transit options that wouldn’t add an hour of walking on top of how long the bus ride took. And that’s assuming clear weather, which we get for maaaaaybe half the year. I don’t know about you, but I’m not about walking for an hour in the blistering cold with spotty sidewalks in busy areas
So, while I could take the option of not buying a car, it would turn a <30 min commute into 2-3 hours one way on a good day. Buying a car was the only way not to lose >25 hours a week on work transportation alone.
I am explicitly talking about this in the context of me being non-american.
And where I live the vast majority of people who can not afford a car (like young people) are not dependent on one. Even if you live in bumfuck nowhere you can get around by moped.
If you work full time you would usually be able to afford a (cheap) car. And if your still in uni the towns are generally big enough for you to not be car-dependant.
Where are you that cars are affordable to a point where this is an usual thing?
Buy the car you can afford. If you can’t buy it outright or make a significant down payment (20-30%), don’t take out a loan, look for a cheaper option. Those interest rates are insane, I’m amazed how anyone would accept them.
I ageree, but that’s his predatory loans work, there’s enough people out there who simply can’t afford not to have a car.
Sure. But if they can’t afford the loans they can’t afford the car, either. No one really needs a $40k new car, anyone could get by with a $2000 used beater.
Not really. This is another thing that falls neatly into Boots Theory.
A new car, well taken care of, will support a driver for a decade or more. A used car, especially a cheap used car, will have problems you don’t know about and you can safely assume the previous owner did not properly care for it if not outright abused it, that will be true more often than it isn’t.
Unless that $2000 used beater has major issues (and most do at that price these days) and you don’t have the cash to fix them. Then you have a $2000 pile of crap and you still need a car. No, not everyone needs an expensive car, but sometimes there’s a good reason to buy something that requires payments.
You have the option of not buying one if you cant afford it.
And there are some used cars around the 2-5k€ pricepoint if you really need one i guess.
Edit: my main point was that it always shocks me to have such a car dependence in the US that you’d even have to go into debt. I am not saying Americans should just not buy cars…
Not really, depending on where you are.
When I was barely above broke out of college, I had to buy a shit box just to be able to go to work, because the only job I could find in my field was >20 mi from where I lived and had no public transit options that wouldn’t add an hour of walking on top of how long the bus ride took. And that’s assuming clear weather, which we get for maaaaaybe half the year. I don’t know about you, but I’m not about walking for an hour in the blistering cold with spotty sidewalks in busy areas
So, while I could take the option of not buying a car, it would turn a <30 min commute into 2-3 hours one way on a good day. Buying a car was the only way not to lose >25 hours a week on work transportation alone.
I am explicitly talking about this in the context of me being non-american. And where I live the vast majority of people who can not afford a car (like young people) are not dependent on one. Even if you live in bumfuck nowhere you can get around by moped.
If you work full time you would usually be able to afford a (cheap) car. And if your still in uni the towns are generally big enough for you to not be car-dependant.
2-5k is not something people have laying around now days.
If they do, they’re not the kind to buy them.
But I’m speaking from UK market, might be worse down here.