Yeah, it’s the same with my Subaru dealership. I keep telling them I drive it until it can’t drive anymore, but they keep calling back just in case I want to perpetually pay instead.
I’m pretty sure we’re the minority. I might break my drive until the wheels fall off in a year or two but that still puts me in 6 years, but this menality about subscriptions not being real money is a cultural issue. Cell phones, cable, car payments, often 2 or more for family, insurance, rent/mortgage… people spend all this money but they don’t “count” it when they say they’re poor and can’t afford anything.
Speaking of which… when i bought my first new car, it was under 10k. The price of cars now… well since we’re pricing young people out of homes might as well not give them cars either I guess.
The price of cars is bat crazy, for real.
I’ve almost never had a car loan, finally got one when they offered me one when I decided I needed a Tacoma for personal/business and used Tacomas with 100k miles were selling for only 20% off buying new and I could get around 1% finance rate. I don’t mind financing at super low interest rates and actually i feel it smarter to do so. Only have 1.5 months left till that’s gone,
I get cold calls every week at least from random dealerships willing to buy my used vehicle and get me in a new car for what I’m paying now. Oh joy.
I remember about a decade ago I had some work that brought me to some guy’s home. The house had to have been worth < 100k, it was in bad shape, no landscaping and dead trees all around. Outside were two brand new shiny 70k+ deluxe pickups. Inside looked a photo from a war zone. Dust everywhere, carpets warn to the nub. No decorations, no extra furniture. Just a warn old couch and a 80+“ wall mounted TV.
I’ve known a few usually youngish guys whose top priorities were big trucks, big TVs and around here a BBQ. You’d go in their house and there be no furnishing. My house was a rental before I purchased it. I know there was an RV and truck here, and there was no mirror either bathroom.
It’s super creepy when your insurance company asks about an RV that isn’t yours, and you know they’re looking at Google Maps to ask that…
Paying 50k+ for a car just boggles my mind, but I know a number of people who do that and they make a lot less than I do. I have a probably unhealthy aversion to ongoing payment. I’d rather pay an annual or lifetime fee.
The sales reps often talk about resell value too… which I never really consider. I bought something. If i get something later for it, okay, but… not a guarantee. Just ask the Saturn and Suzuki car purchasers.
Oh, no doubt. But it’s all about sales. I’m pretty sure many Americans would eat ramen and wear hand me downs if that’s what it took to keep driving their truck-things.
Now, I’m not going to claim I’m any better. I just don’t like SUVs and truck-things. I don’t have kids, I’m in my mid-fifties, and I have very few things I spend money on, as my tastes are generally not extravagant and we don’t have a boat or a summer house (nor want either), etc. So for me, spending a bit more on a car is my indulgence. I like having new-ish cars, and I like new tech. But I like cars, not these other sorts of conveyances. And yes, I’d gladly spend fifty or sixty large if I could make it work, to get a car that would be part transportation, part therapy, and part hobby. Hell, what’s the point of not paying for a kid’s college if you ain’t gonna do something fun?
Hey if you want to spend 100k on a car and would enjoy and can afford, go for it. It’s just weird when someone does that and then says how broke they are. We all have expensive hobbies… I have a pool that cost me 200-300 a month in the summer… it keeps me from having to go to crowded pools and lakes, still like rivers though, I’m probably going to drop a few k on a new computer soon, and some, many, people would call that nuts.
Oh, I hear you. I would never indulge myself that way without taking care of whatever else I actually needed. And you gotta take responsibility–I agree with you 100% that it’s odd to hear people talk about being poor when you hear what they’ve been buying, sometimes.
They buy everything on credit, incurring massive debt. Poor financial management skills.
Yeah it is a self-created problem but this concept that monthly fees/subs don’t “count” largely works in the auto industries favor. Hopefully that won’t last although it kind of feels like a lot of people already forgot the last recession… .as in what it really looks like and why it happened because rinse and repeat.
In fairness, though, it’s a problem that is aided, abetted, and in many ways created by companies in the consumer goods business. It goes back to maybe the twenties, when stuff like phonographs and radios and of course cars were really catching on, and they had saturated the market in terms of the people who wanted these things and could pay cash for them. Companies worked to unravel the traditional shame of being in debt, turning monthly payments into a sign of “savvy financial practice,” convincing people that it was better to spend only a part of the cost each month, and presumably use the rest of the money for productive things. Of course, it never worked out that way.
Since then, people have been bombarded with not only advertising, but products of culture like movies, songs, later TV, etc., all of which portrayed a lifestyle centered on consumer goods as not only desirable, but essential. We can talk about poor financial skills, and perhaps it’s true, but most folks who aren’t wealthy are still swimming in a sea or media that tells them, 24/7, that they need this or that. To resist that means to be the only one on your block without X, or the only person at work without Y, and that is a tough thing to do for most folks.
And it all worked as long as the jobs were stable. Once the economy tilted and the idea of stable, permanent jobs went out the window, we were left with a culture of consumption that no longer had a real economic base in terms of the incomes needed to sustain consumer spending. Ergo, credit ballooned.
People want bling. And why spend money on road repairs when everyone is driving a truck with big tires?
Yeah which is why when we recover but a lot of people didn’t get wage increases with that recovery or they wound up stuck with making less or underemployment it’s an issue. I don’t think everyone who fails into this trap is only their fault. society definitely pushes it it’s just… it’s just… banks don’t tell people what they can afford, they just tell you how much they’re willing to give you. This idea that you should base your purchase on what is available is too common of a mentality. I was hoping the recession kind of… taught some of us to be careful. Granted the most careful can still get in trouble it just… doesn’t feel like anyone learned. There were so many, so many people trying to flip underwater SUVs then, in my neck of the world.
Financing/credit is tool, like anything else. Is society better off if people didn’t have those tools available to them? The reality is things aren’t binary, which is why dynamic regulation is the ideal—you can’t take away the tool completely, but leaving it unchecked is a terrible option, too.
The issue is complex. While it’s crazy to say that it’s all the fault of personal weakness of individuals, its equally crazy to say it’s all the fault of the institutions. If credit is a tool available to consumers, there will always be some percentage of folks who take it too far. The goal is for society to try to tune that percentage to maximize societal gain (the measure of which is clearly subjective) rather than reduce it to zero by essentially eliminating credit.
Take student loans—is the solution to eliminate them, to avoid the risk of insolvency? Then only the rich would have access to higher education. Obviously, there has to be a balance there.
Which, of course, I did not say. I indicated I was simply broadening the focus of the discussion to include institutions. Your point on student loans is a good one, at the level of policy particularly. There, and elsewhere, the real problems lie at the macro level. An economy based on consumer spending must have credit to survive. An education system based on fees determined by the market is going to have severe inequities one way or the other.
You jest, but I think this is dead-on.
It’s somewhat true in the midwest where the roads tend to be shit and never get repaired unless they’re an interstate.
Or in the northeast, where goat tracks are considered thruways.
Looking back I feel crazy for buying my 2010 Fusion for $24k (with upgrades). Not because it’s not a good car (I love it) but because I should have spent less on a car. Sedans have always been cheaper than SUVs so this just means I just won’t buy another ford probably.
I wouldn’t feel that way, I’ve always thought that the amount of money you spend on a car should be at least weighted against how much time you spend in the car. No one wants to spend 10 or more hours of their week in a car they don’t like, just to save a few bucks.
Yeah, I spent 14 years driving a boring Altima. It was reliable, and I never needed any major repairs for it. But man, I really should have spent the money on fixing the radio and CD players when the stereo system buttons stopped working. First I was restricted to only two speakers out of four. And then no CD. And then no FM either because when I changed my battery out, the radio rebooted, and the AM/FM button was one of the buttons that had stopped working. So I was stuck on AM radio, listening to Rush Limbaugh and such for a couple of years.
I was so relieved when the car finally started experiencing engine issues. The Subaru Impreza is so much more fun to drive than the Altima, and I love having a functional stereo system again. SO MUCH. (Although, I could have fixed that on the Nissan, but it just fell into that mental category of “needless expense”).
When I was looking for a car, I was shopping around for about a year. I was really surprised when I test drove an Audi. I’d always looked up to them, thought they’d be my jam. But it just wasn’t fun to drive at all. Same with a Ford Focus Platinum. The suspension was so tight, I could feel every bump on the road. It was the most harrowing 20 minute test drive ever. Ever pothole felt like a deathly hazard in the Focus.
The Camry was again, too boring, it felt like driving my Nissan Altima again. Same with the Accord. Hyundai Sonata was excellent by the way. I just loved the feel of that car, I wish I could have found a reasonably priced one, but I just got unlucky. Ones I regret not being able to test drive included the Kia Optima and the Ford Fusion. I’ve also heard great things about the Mazda 6, unfortunately that car is like a unicorn on the used car market in this area. Same with the Hyundai Genesis. I just couldn’t find one.
I also test drove a Subaru Legacy, and that one was really disappointing. Unlike the Subaru Impreza, Highlander and Outback, the Legacy base sedan just doesn’t have enough power. It has the same engine as the Impreza but a much heavier body, and it just feels limp. Honestly, it felt worse than driving an Altima/Camry/Accord. And I would have never known that if I hadn’t tried to test drive it. On paper it looks so good.
Also, I can sort of the see the appeal of the new compact SUV category for people. I test drove a Toyota RAV4, it was boring but that model had 3rd row seating, and I love the way the 3rd row easily folded down and disappeared if I didn’t need the 3rd row. That one was tempting. Plus I recently drove a Fiat 500-x, which is a beautiful little compact SUV. It drove just like my Impreza, but is much higher up off the ground, so it feels like I’m towering over other sedans on the road, even though it drives like a sudan. And it had a beautiful red interior with old fashioned circle dials and indicators. Subaru is a great car for driving feel, but they are so boring with their interiors, even on the newest models.
If I was in the car market right now, I’d be most tempted by the standard features on the new Toyota Camrys. Everyone else wants extra money for features like lane departure, automatic braking, adaptive cruise control, and various other safety features that are pretty cool in today’s new cars. But Camry has them standard now. That makes their value pretty good, even in comparison to Hyundai Sonatas, for instance. But, unfortunately, Camrys still have that same problem as the base model Subaru Legacy: too little power for how much it weighs. Getting the V6 model in both cases will probably make one much happier.