“No one cares about what car you drive” has such Boomer energy to it, and it’s completely false.
Our 2nd car (ie. the one we use if my wife or I need to commute individually - suburban sprawl means we live in a public transportation desert), is a beat-up 15yo Hyundai hatchback.
We both love it because it’s economical, surprisingly reliable, cheap as anything to maintain, and we don’t particularly care if it gets dinged at a parking lot.
But the looks we get from our peers when we drive to our respective offices (we usually WFH), holy crap! Constantly having to explain ourselves is tiresome, and our line managers have both made off-handed comments sarcastically asking if we’re not being paid enough. 🤦🏻♂️
Yeah, instead of “no one cares about what car you drive” it should be “you shouldn’t concern yourself with the opinion of anyone who cares about what car you drive”.
15yo Hyundai hatchback
surprisingly reliable
You’ve been lucky then. That I believe is in the era of Hyundai/Kia where they’d chew up replacement engines like crazy. But I guess it didn’t affect all engines.
The car was a hand-me-down from one of our grandparents, with ~100K miles on the odometer.
They owned it since new, and like most old people’s cars - it was religiously serviced. Keeping up with maintenance goes a long way towards keeping most cars on the road (unless they’re BMWs, but that’s a whole other story).
Keeping up with maintenance goes a long way towards keeping most cars on the road (unless they’re BMWs, but that’s a whole other story).
Ironically, well maintained BMWs have significantly better durability than Hyundais of that era, just not reliability.
I see M57 engined BMWs doing 500k+ km all the time. ZF 6HP transmissions are pretty good too. Yet the BMW E60/E61 and similar era 3 and 7 series that had these engines and transmissions are considered very unreliable, because everything else around that super solid core breaks down every now and then. They last forever, they’ll just leave you stranded crying when some plastic pipe in the god damn cooling system breaks again.
Maybe it’s different in your social circle. I work with engineers and technicians and keeping an old car going is respected not derided.
I wouldn’t want to hang around with people that look down their noses at me because I drive a car with 100,000 miles on the clock.
It’s not so much our social circles; rather our respective companies’ Department Heads and C-Suites. Appearances and office politics play a hand in perception, unfortunately.
While I can somewhat understand their viewpoints, as both my wife and I are paid well - neither of us have client-facing roles, and we have a nice enough family car for carting around the bub and in-laws.
There is honestly something liberating about not worrying about dings, scratches, or expensive replacement parts.
My boss did joke about giving me a raise to get me a car and I’m all for it.
Given the community, you should probably finagle that raise and just put it towards friendlier commute alternatives if possible!
Boss: “Hey, I have you that raise - where’s the car?” You: “Oh, I put that towards an e-bike instead!”
You have a point, but you need to not care about some else’s bullshit opinion. You don’t need to explain yourself. Save your dough and you’ll have money for whatever suits you down the road.
Paying cash for big items like cars isn’t always the best idea, but less debt never hurts.
Millions? I don’t think so. There is no investment that would turn $30K or whatever into millions that was safe enough to work for the majority of people. But it would be a significant help.
That being said, for most people, the amount you’d spend to live in a place where a car isn’t needed or constantly paying for ride share or taxis greatly exceeds the amount you’d save by not having a car for the vast majority of people, and that’s not even getting into the ableism issue.
And sure we could get into buying a cheaper, used car or whatever, but in the long term the maintenance costs, having to buy another car sooner, and other financial risks to cars outside of warrantee over a lifetime will add up similarly unless you’re really lucky or can repair your own cars.
That being said, for most people, the amount you’d spend to live in a place where a car isn’t needed or constantly paying for ride share or taxis greatly exceeds the amount you’d save by not having a car for the vast majority of people, and that’s not even getting into the ableism issue.
I disagree with everything else you say, as the other replies to you point out. But this is a really good point.
The whole, where do you live thing is super important. The last time we moved my wife and I were very adamant about a specific maximum commute length in car, or a length by transit. And getting somewhere to live that was easy to commute from. We compared the price including mass transit commute at the max distance to anything we were getting closer with the commute included from there too.
The differences were absolutely significant. Many places were cheaper to live an hour away, even with car payments, insurance, and gas. That’s absolutely ridiculous and part of so many problems from climate change to motor vehicle deaths.
We need to enforce mixed development, the people who work in an area need to be able to afford living in that area. Pushing the workers out should not be acceptable.
the people who work in an area need to be able to afford living in that area.
I read an article in my local paper that 95% of the workers in my town don’t live in town. And while there are new apartment buildings going up, paying $2000/mo for 300 sq ft without a washer/dryer or even an oven is not going to be attracting much of that 95% back.
Working life is more like 40 years. Those back end years are huge, it goes up to 840k. Which is why you’re supposed to start on your 401k right away. Of course 99% of people don’t get this talk until they’re 40; go through a poverty period after high school; or never make it out of paycheck to paycheck living for other reasons. (Like medical debt)
Very few people get the good pay, good contributions, and consequently the good retirement. We also completely lie to people about retirement. We tell them they have to scrimp and save so they aren’t homeless when they’re 80. In reality half of us will be dead by 75 and half again by 85.
And sure we could get into buying a cheaper, used car or whatever, but in the long term the maintenance costs, having to buy another car sooner, and other financial risks to cars outside of warrantee over a lifetime will add up similarly unless you’re really lucky or can repair your own cars.
Buying a low-mileage used car and even paying for a shop to do the maintenance is almost always cheaper than buying something with $500+ monthly payments. I don’t actually agree for the most part with Dave Ramsey (even about the entirety of this post)…but he’s correct that it is cheaper.
Most Americans have less than $1,000 in savings. So any car for that amount is not going to survive long. So most Americans still get loans for used cars.
And with interest rates so high, a payment of $550 will only get you about $25K. That’s enough for a decent new small sedan, but if you have kids (especially if 3 or more), that’s probably the minimum needed to get a used minivan that will last a while.
Anything else is only going to last a few years at best before needing major repairs.
I just did an autotrader search and in my (very unaffordable) area, there were lots of serviceable cars under 10k. If you live in a place with a garage you can even buy a used EV and eliminate whole categories of maintenance costs.
The whole point is to buy something that requires smaller or no monthly payments, and then bank the savings and eventually buy something better. “A couple of years” can do the trick in some cases.
and that’s not even getting into the ableism issue.
Infrastructure that requires people to drive is far more ableist than the inverse. As many people with a disability can’t drive at all (or driving is a significant challenge).
Right. That was what I was saying.
I didn’t get into that issue, but it’s a major one, and not just for people confined to a wheelchair who might be able to get assistance through government sponsored programs, but also people with certain types of PTSD, Autism, ADHD, anxiety issues, etc., (including lots of veterans) or people with vision issues or other disabilities that aren’t considered “enough” of a disability to get help, but make it difficult or impossible to drive.
Or you can take the train, walk or bike. All of which are much much cheaper.
Oh come on, Lemmy. I know I’m on c/fuckcars; but seriously - $600 a month for a new car sounds really good to me, I’m from Eastern Europe.
It’s good because new cars are significantly more reliable, fuel efficient, safe and comfortable than 10+ year old cars. If you drive a lot and can’t afford to pay $15k up front for a decent ~6yo car, then it’s really not that bad. Much better than buying $600 rolling wreckage, I can tell you that much.
Yes people, I know you only use bikes and trains and whatnot. But some people neee cars, and you have to respect that. Or are you gonna tell this mother of 2, living in a village, working from office 20km from home, that she would be better off just sticking to the public transport which visits her place once every 2 hours.
This is for insurance, not the cost of buying the car. Yes some people do need cars because of their situation and the majority of people here can recognise that but to pay so much just for fucking insurance!
Oh, that’s odd, I don’t get it. It says average car payment per month, I thought it means it’s the monthly loan payment, which is super fine.
$550 is about what I pay ANNUALLY for AC for my 2015 Mondeo.
But yeah, it would be close to $3000 annually if I wanted to lease any new vehicle.
Ah OK, I see what you mean. I thought you were referencing the title of the post as it mentions that his neighbour is paying x amount per month for insurance but you are right the image accompanying the post does say average car payment which would referring to paying for the actual car.
We were both concentrating on different parts of the post! You were right if referring to the image text, sorry.
The picture is talking about the purchase price of the car, OP decided to add insurance onto this.
If this is just insurance then it is straight up wrong. The national average is like $200/m.
Yes people, I know you only use bikes and trains and whatnot. But some people neee cars, and you have to respect that. Or are you gonna tell this mother of 2, living in a village, working from office 20km from home, that she would be better off just sticking to the public transport which visits her place once every 2 hours.
The point of this movement isn’t to simply ban cars like that will somehow solve all of life’s problems. Some people use bikes and trains not just because they can, but because they have to.
Cars are a symptom of a pattern of development that makes us disconnected, both from each other and from our needs. It isn’t right that you should have to work 20km from home where the only option you have is to spend monthly payments on a car loan, insurance and gas. You should have the option to work from home, or closer to home, or within reach of easily accessible and usable public transit.
I don’t get your comment. You can have a decent car new at 400€/month and I still think that’s ridiculously high.
Used cars make so much more sense when you value rational arguments. (Or bikes, public transportation, feet).
I don’t think you can have a large family wagon for €400, at least in my country (Poland)
Buying a new car is a poor financial decision in general, considering things like depreciation or extreme leasing costs.
So yeah, I agree, buying a used car is the way to go, but getting one also gets much much more difficult the older and cheaper you want it to be.
Wtf does your neighbor drive that insurance is $350 per month on it? A Ferrari?
Example reason: https://mastodon.social/tags/FloatingCars
I thought the same. Also it’s much higher for young males under age 25. Tbf testosterone is a bitch and that demographic causes a lot of the most extreme preventable accidents.
Which ironically encourages people to ride bikes! If only that were not nearly a suicidal activity in the USA in so many places… 😢
