The thing is, I can afford it. I’m on track to meet all of my financial goals within acceptable time frames. I’ve budgeted for the emergency fund, the retirement, the wedding, the house, the student loans. Sure, I could do some of it sooner if I bought a cheaper used car, but I bought a car I’ll love for the 10-15 years I’m going to be driving it.

The models I loved the most online, usually turned out to be horrible choices for my needs. The Chevy Cobalt and Aveo had good mileage, but no space in the back for tall people. There was little leg room. The Prius, my favorite choice for gas mileage, was way out of my price range, even used. The hybrids were of similar situation, the 1,000.00 I would save per year in gasoline costs wouldn’t near cover the additional 5,000.00+ of sticker price. (calulate your yearly mileage and gasoline use– then look at MPG VS initial cost+tax+tags+ yearly insurance AND the average number of years you keep a car.)

The best way to save money is to drive them into the ground. Every car you buy is a 10,000 to 30,000+ purchase– so look at how many you will purchase per decade. Makes it look very different– if you buy three in a decade… that’s a lot of money.

We only bought this “new” car because our old Town and Country — a 1994 with 285,000 miles on it was killed in an accident. The insurance money helped with the new T&C purchase.

Regarding safety features being a reason for a new car — we were hit in a head-on collision going 65 miles per hour. Our airbags deployed, our seat belts held, the car crumpled exactly as it should. We had many broken bones and injuries, but the car performed brilliantly. It’s not necessary to buy a new vehicle to have safety. It’s necessary to research options and find out how a vehicle has actually performed in crashes.

In our family, my husband does all our car repair. He can fix anything — can rebuild an engine, transmission, etc., with enough time. For our family, old cars with less than 100,000 miles are a good buy. I know that’s not the case in many families, but my parents make the same auto choices and neither of them know how to work on a car. They DO know the phone number of a trustworthy mechanic, so the same strategy works for them. But I might not recommend it to just anyone…

We usually bought used cars & I keep excellent records on them – every cent I spend on them. And if they cost me less than $100 per mo on average for maintenance & repairs, I keep it. I couldn’t buy another car for that low a monthly payment.

Drove a used 1979 Buick Electa Ltd for @ 9 years. Had 95k on it when I bought it and had 363k when I sold it. There’s a real good story behind that vehicle sale.

The other car was a 91 Chev Lumina. It was about 6 y/o when we bought it. Had @85k miles on it. Had 313K when it died & I was grief stricken (was the same day James Doohan died).

Keep good records of all moneys spent on your vehicle, average it out every month over the lifetime of the car, and if it averages low, keep it. It can really pay.

I was also surprised to see that no one else here mentioned buying dealer demos. These are usually limited to 12,000-15,000 miles, and you can often get a current year vehicle for thousands less than a brand new one. I bought a demo 2008 Jeep with 13,000 miles recently that had been a dealer demo, and paid just a little over half the sticker price. I literally bought almost twice as much Jeep as I could have bought if I’d bought one new. And yes, I often have to use 4WD, so yes, I really did need a Jeep, lol.

My previous one was a case of over-inventory. The company (Nissan) was bringing out a new model, while the dealers had an oversupply of the old ones. I got it for 20% off.

I have the same problem. We are a two-car household with weekday commutes in different directions and no public transportation. Add to that that we live in St. Louis where every dealership, mechanic and brake shop is always packed, and only a few are open on Saturday (forget Sunday or evenings!).

The age of the car doesn’t matter so much. Even routine tasks like replacing worn brake pads or flushing the antifreeze require that I either spend an entire Saturday afternoon in some dingy waiting room, or schedule a time during my workweek at the dealership, which usually results in me renting a car for $30/day so I can go to work (there are no free loaner cars).

Frankly, I end up spending the $30/day rental fee because my personal time is important to me. It’s one of the costs of working a full-time job with a long commute.

You would have had to deal with the same kind of nonsense if you had a leased vehicle or not.

I’m not saying that some stuff won’t break, but if you are worried about paying for cab rides, take what you would have put into the lease and sock it away so you can pay for the cab rides. I’m betting you’ll end up with a nice stack of money once the car is paid for. And I know at my office there are lots of people who have a similar commute to me, I can either just ask for a ride, or if I’d need to ride with for a few days, I’ll buy them lunch or a tank of gas.

You could also ask for a loaner car, or in many cases rent a car directly from the dealership. There are lots of ways to get around being out of a car for a couple of days that don’t involve a lot of cab rides.

Thanks for your helpful feedback about leasing/maintenance. It does help me feel confident about my current decision, which is a used 2005 Hyuandi Accent with the 10/100 warranty.

I have been generally happy with the car except the starter died and my warranty proved less than useless (We fix your car, Mon-Fri 9-5, it may take a week… and we may bill you. I paid for a mechanic to do it in 4 hours)

After the annoyance of that incident I was unsure if leasing would be a better option, but it sounds as though it is not. I was shocked that a car less than 3 years old would have a problem.

One more point, too. You can purchase an extended warranty on new vehicles, although generally it’s a waste of money since modern vehicles are generally reliable for the first 10 years. If you are worried about paying for repairs, you can always set aside what you would have paid on the warranty, too, and have it earn interest. But you likely won’t need it — it’s another way in which the auto industry can earn a lot of money.

Another point — if you buy new, you have something like a 3/36 warranty (Honda/Toyota/Subaru/etc), a 5/100 (GM), or even a 10/100 (Kia/Hyundai?) on some cars. On a lease, you can still be responsible for repairs (if it’s not covered under warranty, for example you hit a curb on a snowy day and break something) and maintenance of the car. And you have to pay insurance, too.

So you still have all of the risk of owning a car, and when you are done with payments, you can’t keep driving it, you turn it in on another one and keep making payments.

A concrete example is mine. I purchased a Subaru Impreza in 2002. I paid it off in three years and haven’t had a car payment for three years at this point, and likely will not have one again, ever (I plan on paying cash for the next car). That means all I pay for is gas and maintenance, which are considerably less than the ~$400 I was shelling out when I was paying for the car. And paying a $30 cab ride once in a blue moon (or getting exercise and taking a $0 bike ride, or getting a ride from a co-worker for the occasional time your car is in the shop) is considerably cheaper than spending whatever the lease payment is for the next 10-15 years.

When my wife and I relocated two and half years ago we had no car payment. She had a very, very reliable newer car that was paid for and I had a horribly unreliable older used car that we figured would bite the dust before too long.

Fast forward a year and a half after our relocation and the beater died a painful death and my wife’s car was totaled in an accident when she was t-boned by a sixteen year old trying to “gun it” across a divided highway. I still can’t believe that she walked away from that accident relatively unharmed. There is surely something positive to be said about a car with exceptional safety ratings.

Six months after the accident I found myself wondering “where is the world is all our money being sucked away to”. All I had to do was look in the garage at $600 worth of monthly payments that we didn’t have when we relocated which I am now feverishly trying to pay off so that we can get our financial lives back on track. I loathe being in debt and never want to visit this situation again.

Due to those developments, my wife and I recently went through the process of investigating whether or not it was worth it to trade in my car for a more fuel efficient model (I tend to drive at least 400 – 500 miles per months just for work). What it really came down to was that SUV trade-in values have dropped pretty quickly and enough that it wouldn’t have saved us an appreciable sum of money except on fuel.

Part of the conclusion for me is realizing that maybe at this point, the only way I’ll ever realize the full value of my mistake purchase (even though I really love it) is if I get it paid off and then keep it for as long as possible. It seems fairly certain that I’ll extract much more value from my car than I’ll ever get for it in trade (I think/hope).

A well-maintained quality automobile will likely last 10 years before anything major will break, and even then, it’s still highly unlikely. I drove cars in the early 90’s that were manufactured in the early 80’s that were extremely reliable even back then, and things have only improved (for all manufacturers) since then.

Purchase a Camry or Accord (or Civic or Corolla), maintain it like the manufacturer recommends, and you can very likely have 15 years of trouble-free ownership, and probably 12-13 years of payment-free ownership!

Leasing a car is one of the biggest legalized scams ever. No disclosure of the “true” interest rate you are paying while you are leasing, nothing at all left over at the end of the lease period (except another least), and only getting a set amount of miles in the contract before having to pay more. As for the business expense, you can depreciate a van you pay for, too. And at current fire-sale prices for trucks and SUV’s, it might make a lot more sense to buy a van and drive it for 5-10 years, since vans don’t really ever look “dated” until they are extremely old.

My car was bought new, paid for early and I plan on driving it 10-15 years. The next car will be a 2 year old something off lease from Toyota or Honda, although I will go new if the used prices are very close to the new ones — we encountered that before buying a Honda, the new one was $500-$1000 more than the one with 30K miles that was 2 years old. I didn’t want to inherit someone else’s problem.

[I bought it in 2005 and my previous car was a 1990 (also brand new at the time) to give you an idea of how long they can last if you take good care of it. I gave the old car to a family member and it is still running, so my price did not include a trade in.]