LOL, if you think that’s bad, wait 'til you find out that the suburbs can’t afford roads, either!
Car-dependency is a fiscal disaster on both the micro- and macro-scale, let alone everything else catastrophic about it.
It is also a disaster on an environmental scale, and not just due to emissions.
For sure! I could write a novel about “everything else catastrophic about it” (and probably have by now, if you concatenate my previous Lemmy and Reddit comments on the subject), but that would distract from my point that the headline “Americans can no longer afford their cars” applies in more ways than one.
Interesting article and concept. I’d say it’s a fairly apt analogy. Though, it makes me wonder how much better cities fair, as I’m not so sure they’re doing much better being able to afford covering the costs of all their crumbling infrastructure.
In my opinion, humans just can’t glob together in the millions and it not be a disaster in numerous ways.
Though, it makes me wonder how much better cities fair, as I’m not so sure they’re doing much better being able to afford covering the costs of all their crumbling infrastructure.
That’s going to depend on density. Higher densities means more people paying for the same amount of infrastructure, leading to better affordability.
It’s also going to depend on the type of infrastructure - car infrastructure scales hilariously poorly, while transit generally becomes better when you add more riders.
It’s actually the opposite - suburbs and car centric design are strangling cities. If you look at history before car centric design and suburbs, the best quality of life was generally found in cities.
But, the way we build cities has changed since the 50s, and they don’t get the density that they used to. It used to be the case that a city generally grew by increasing the density of older parts of the city. Single family homes would become multifamily townhouses, which would give way to multi-storey apartment buildings. As the density increased, so would the tax revenue per square foot, allowing a city to invest more on improvements like infrastructure. But since the 50s, cities generally don’t increase density like that. Instead, they build more suburbs filled with single family homes that are a net drain on city revenue. And then you add in the infrastructure needed for cars commuting into the city every day, and that revenue per square foot gets even worse. The suburbs are basically subsidized by the densest (and often poorest) sections of a city.
The example I always think of is the old main street style businesses vs. the modern convenience store. On the same piece of land that today houses a convenience store in the middle of a parking lot, you used to be able to fit 3 or 4 businesses and possibly apartments above them.
Cars have always been relatively expensive to own and operate and the American way, unfortunately, has been to take out lines of credit in order to purchase vehicles they could just barely afford.
It’s insane to think about but the average car payment for a new vehicle in 2023 was $726 and the average loan term is nearly 70 months!
I’ve always lived by two rules when it comes to vehicles:
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Never buy new. Buy approximately two years old used low mileage
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If I can’t afford the vehicle on a three year note, I can’t afford the vehicle
Additionally, always secure third party financing and have it in your back pocket, but don’t tell the dealership that part until absolutely necessary. They may try to match it, but their fine print has always had catches it in that make it a worse option in my experience.
I’m not sure if these rules will work going forward as prices seem to have doubled in the past three years, and I’m loathe to ponder how purchase is getting replaced by subscribe.
My current car is ten years old with 110k miles on it. I keep it super maintained because I can’t stomach the thought of my next buying experience.
As a young adult who wanted to avoid debt, my rules were somewhat similar
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Car must be used, for sale by private seller. Avoids dealership fees, warranty fees etc.
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If I cannot buy it in full, in cash that day, I cannot afford it.
The sweet spot for me was buying cars in roughly the 6 year rage. Specifically Toyotas and Hondas. My last car was an '06 Accord and it was a fantastic car. Affordable to buy, no bullshit, cheap to repair and required repairs rarely, drove great, solid interior. I would have kept driving it for another 5-10 years easy if I hadn’t moved to a country/city where driving is totally unnecessary.
My buddy bought it off me and did some minor things to it and is still happily driving as his daily commuter right now.
I totally agree with your rules here, however I recently helped my mom buy a new car (2023 Nissan Murano) and while sitting with her in the finance room deciding on warranty stuff I realized that cars are mostly 100 interconnected computers on wheels. This means the most likely thing to break on a car is a computer. This is something only the dealer can fix probably. Because of this you can’t get the same kind of warranty on a used car, only new.
The warranty my mom on this new car is great and it will cover any kind of computer issue for years. If she had gone and saved a bunch of money by picking a used car from the same year or 1-2 years old she could not get that warranty, and if a computer issue popped up years later it could be terribly expensive.
The computers are, by far, the most reliable parts of a car. They’re not subject to mechanical stresses or wear, and the real-time/embedded operating systems are far more fault resistant than desktop/phone OSes. The computers also mean that you can buy a $20 OBDII scanner and have the car tell you what’s wrong with it. Maybe an extra $10 for an app that will decode most of the manufacturer-specific codes. The difference between those $30 diagnostics and the $10,000 system the dealer uses is mostly that the dealer system includes all the manufacturer codes and step-by-step directions for fixing each fault.
On any device with moving parts, the parts that fail most early and often are the moving parts. Solid state electronics are not moving parts.
I think statistically speaking the absolute best value is a 5 year old car that has been at least reasonably well-maintained. The vast majority of depreciation happens during those first 5 years.
For those that do need to finance a car, a three year loan term should be the maximum. I think you are 100% correct on that. There are people with car loans that have terms of 7 years. It’s sad that people are setting themselves up for failure like that. If you can’t afford the monthly payments on a 3 year term then you really can’t afford the car at all.
I bought an 8yo car 2 years ago. It’s just about to hit 100kkm on the odometer, and cost me a couple grand today as a result of the previous owner’s lack of care/maintenance.
I’ve been upgrading/replacing things as I’ve been able to afford to, but this is the last car I buy (that isn’t electric) as a result of the ridiculous pricing of vehicles today. I certainly couldn’t afford the car I CURRENTLY OWN if I had to buy it today.
Also note I adore this car, otherwise I wouldn’t be putting all this time AND money in, it would be one or the other (or sale :D )
Luckily for me public transport and emobility vehicles (scooters, bikes and skateboards, [I chose skateboard]) in my city are much better than the average in my country. Also regarding emobility vehicles I’m in one of the only states where they aren’t banned (except on private property).
I’m hoping I get many more years of smiles out of my road legal track car, in the event I don’t it will be sold (or stripped out for track only) and I’ll just ride my bike more, it’s faster and makes a better noise anyway.
On top of being much better for the environment, I hope EV conversions become commonplace very soon. I would much rather (regrettably) convert my car to EV than buy a purpose built one, I don’t need GPS, lane keep, cameras, spyware, a giant tablet screen (otherwise known as a distraction) and a small fortune for every one of those components that fails. I just need instruments to tell me if the car is working as designed/intended.
Sorry for the wall of text folks, as you were.
By the time you pay off your car, it’ll be a piece of junk. How does leasing the car compare?
Leasing is usually a worse choice financially. However it can make sense in a few scenarios such as having to always have a new car and business expensing. Now might be one of the few times it’s worth leasing, in the US for some EVs where a lease can take advantage of the full tax incentive but a purchase can not
Leasing is like setting money on fire and using money to put the fire out. The only scenario it ever makes sense is vs buying and selling a car every 2-3 years.
Modern cars are extremely reliable, there isn’t a good reason to need a new one in less than a decade unless it’s involved in an accident.
That was my only hesitation for buying an EV: they’re too new and changing too quickly to have much track record on how well they last. I did go ahead though, so we’ll see in 10-15 years.
Historically my practice is to buy a reliable car new and keep until major repairs, usually 10-15 years. It helps if you are able to set aside sufficient money to avoid a loan
Stop buying suvs and trucks. Buy compacts and small sedans. As those markets erode it just makes everything worse.
I’m a multi tradesman and I run about in a 1.2L Korean shitbox with a trailer when I need it
Same tradesman in the US apparently needs a 6L V12 pick-up simply because of his micropenis? Yeah thanks for the pollution Brad/Chad/Tad whatever
He isn’t a tradesman. He is either an office worker or unskilled labor.
The only practical use I have ever seen in my life for those oversized pickups is in South East Asia I rode on one that had been converted into van to go up and down this shit road into the mountains. Moving people. So unless you make a living loading up 8 people at a time to bring them up a terrifying grade mountainside you don’t need a vehicle like that.
I’m pretty sure the actual penis size doesn’t factor here. It’s the self-perceived size.
Dude has an inferiority complex & tries to compensate.
If we’d always been accounting for all the actual costs of cars, including externalities, most people would have never been able to afford them, we’d recognize them as the very costly luxeries they actually are, and not have completely dismantled our ability to live without them in every city except NYC, Boston, Chicago, DC, and San Francisco.
You could say that about everything. If you would account for all actual cost no one would fly, eat steaks, own 2 TVs or change phones every 2 years either. We would buy things that last 10-20 years and replace them only when they are broken. As we used to…
Slippery slope aside, I think reducing unnecessary consumerism would be beneficial for our most vuneral populations. There would be a lower barrier of entry into the economy and more resources would be available at a lower cost for people who cannot afford them
Oh, I wasn’t making a slippery slope argument. I meant that this is what should happen. We exported most of the devastating impact on the environment and the terrible working conditions to developing countries so that we can enjoy tons of crap we don’t really need. If things we buy would reflect the actual costs we would have to limit how much we consume. Of course no one would like it.
Well, it’s a mixed bag. There have been absolutely incredible advances in efficiency that do enable a lot of things to genuinely be much cheaper and accessible than they used to be, but some of that is also just the ability to throw external costs on other people (climate change, for instance). This is why things like carbon taxes are so strongly supported by economists.
Steak, for instance, is hugely subsidized by how little farmers have to pay for water, along with other government benefits. Flying has environmental costs, but those are reasonably quantifiable and, per flight and per passenger, not that insane as far as I understand.
I do think consumer electronics are a bit of a different story though. Yes, cheap labor plays a huge role there, but those labor costs aren’t completely divorced from reality; the fact of the matter is that east Asian labor is actually chap. Ocean shipping and modern production plants are insanely efficient, though again climate costs need to be captured.
But east Asian labour is cheap because of bad working conditions, weak workers’ rights and no environmental protections.
Stop buying brand new Escalades and super F150s that you don’t really need.
I can barely afford the 2015 Subaru Crosstrek i bought back in July. Even 8 year old base model cars cost over $16,000 these days
