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.
Comment on Based on a true story
Paddzr@lemmy.world 1 day agoWhere are you that cars are affordable to a point where this is an usual thing?
photonic_sorcerer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Paddzr@lemmy.world 1 day ago
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.
photonic_sorcerer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
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.
skulblaka@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
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.
frickineh@lemmy.world 1 day ago
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.
needanke@feddit.org 1 day ago
You have the option of not buying one if you cant afford it.
spooky2092@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
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.
needanke@feddit.org 1 day ago
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.
fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
Every service worker is someone who needs a car but can’t afford one, it’s normal for working adults
fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
No, you don’t. Go look at America on Google maps. Then take a good hard look at the transit schedules.
Paddzr@lemmy.world 1 day ago
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.
belastend@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
Yeah, u buy a used one for like 2,000 - 3,000€. Or you lease. But taking on a loan with 16.9% interest would not cross my mind.
uuldika@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
it’s extremely rare to find such a cheap used car. my partner spent $8k on one that lasted a year. also, you might be surprised to learn that driving isn’t optional in most of the US - it’s literally impossible to live without a car. I live in a suburb. it’s several miles of dangerous roads to get to a grocery store. there is no nearby public transit. even large cities like LA were completely designed around cars. zoning and urban planning here completely screwed us.
yes, it sucks, yes I’m aware, yes I’d love to live in a walkable European city with commuter rail and cafes on the street corner, no I don’t have a choice.
belastend@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
I know about american circumstances, thats why i added that part in parentheses.
In the european countryside, car dependency is definitely on the same level as in America.
On the topic of prices: the first car my brother and i shared was a 2008 ford fusion. We bought in 2019 for 1.5k.
skulblaka@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
😭
American, I bought a 2005 Honda Civic in 2020 for $7,500
dan@upvote.au 1 day ago
But for there to be used cars, there needs to be new cars… How do the people that buy new cars pay for them?
helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world 1 day ago
You take that 10k you were going to drop on a crap used car, use that as down payment on a new car. Get a longer loan with lower interest and keep monthly payment lower. The larger the down payment, the lower the monthly will be, and now you have 10 years to set aside money for the next new car or “out of warranty” repairs.
There are still new cars that have a sticker less than 30k, after warranties and any desired upgrades, probably closer to 35k-40k for anything not a truck, EV, or sport car.
There’s also people who lease, they pay lots of money to rent a car for around 3 year, after that they trade in for a new car and the old car gets sold as used.
Allero@lemmy.today 1 day ago
Those are older/richer people that saved enough money to buy new.
belastend@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
Either company cars, leased cars or someone has the spare 30k for a car.
And of course people take out loans for cars too, but thats less common. And not really necessary in the cities.
fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
True. The entire car market from new to beater is gonna get fucked up by tariffs pretty soon
Cocopanda@futurology.today 1 day ago
I spent 55k and bought my midlife crisis sports car. Most expensive thing I have ever spent money on and I just finished paying it off after 6 years 718$ payments. Now to buy a home. One day.
Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world 1 day ago
What’d you buy?
endeavor@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
You can get solid suzukis for 1.5k that last forever. If you can find porn for your weird fetishes you should be able to find a single goddamn guide on how to buy a car used. Every single bit of info on how to buy, maintain and fix vehicles is online. For free. For everyone. If you can’t live without a car at least spend 20 minutes googling it before buying a money pit.
Bassman1805@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Nobody with financial sense is taking out a 16.9% loan on a car. 5% is pretty typical right now for people with a decent credit history.
Whether or not that’s reasonable, is certainly up for discussion.