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Found this on yahoo, from the Wall Street Journal. Although I think the author emphasizes some costs a bit too much, it is good food for thought:
From the article:
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Your car could be driving your budget into the ground.
If you're driving 15,000 miles a year—not uncommon for an American worker—in a midsize sedan such as a Toyota Camry or Ford Fusion, you'll spend more than $760 a month on average, or $9,150 a year, on gas, maintenance, tires, full-coverage insurance, license and registration costs, depreciation and finance charges.
That's according to an annual report by AAA, the auto club, on driving costs in 2013, based on buying a new car and driving it for five years and 75,000 miles.
But your costs easily could be higher.
Got an SUV? It will cost you about $967 a month, or $11,600 a year, according to AAA.
And don't forget those one-time and infrequent costs not included in the AAA report—say, $10 a pop for a carwash every other month, an occasional parking ticket of, say, $40. Perhaps you're also shelling out for paid parking at the baseball game or a downtown garage. Add $300 a year for those types of charges. Let's just say you avoid budget-busting speeding tickets.
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There's more at the link.
To me, this really shows the extra expense (I wanted to use the term "folly", but I won't) of a new car, from the time you drive it off the lot (instant depreciation) to when you are insuring it and other things down the road. I've always thought it much better to get a two or three year old car and avoid the several thousand dollars of depreciation, at least.
Once the warranties have expired, repair costs will, of course, be more on a several year old car, but once you get even farther down the road, as we do with our Festivas and Aspires, things can get even better.
Once you have the tools, space, know-how and interest to do your own work, you are pretty much taking what most other car buyers consider "junk" and recrafting it!
Consider this simple list:
New car: $11K to sky's the limit
Two to three year old car: $7K or so on up
Eight to ten year old car: $2K to $4K and up
Over ten years old: How low can we go? Often, just above scrap prices...with under $1K being quite common.
However, while buying a "middle aged" car will invite certain repair costs (often occurring around 75 to 100 thousand miles, depending on how it was taken care of, and buying a really old (usually well over 100K miles) car will too, the older the car and the more experience you have at fixing them, the more boldness in choosing better quality parts, doing more modifications, etc. will be.
Essentially, just here at this site, we have seen folks mostly or even entirely rebuild really old, "junk" cars in a way that used to be thought appropriate only for "collectables."
Think about this.
As we go on, with many of us choosing to stick with Festivas and Aspires (and possibly on to Kia Rios!), now consider our costs taken into the future, amortized over not five to seven years (as many new cars would be), and not even over ten or fifteen years, but over say, TWENTY TO THIRTY YEARS (or more!).
Who knows what the future holds?
Karl, gloating
PS: Just don't get hit by an SUV doing more than 30mph...
From the article:
************************************************** ****************************************
Your car could be driving your budget into the ground.
If you're driving 15,000 miles a year—not uncommon for an American worker—in a midsize sedan such as a Toyota Camry or Ford Fusion, you'll spend more than $760 a month on average, or $9,150 a year, on gas, maintenance, tires, full-coverage insurance, license and registration costs, depreciation and finance charges.
That's according to an annual report by AAA, the auto club, on driving costs in 2013, based on buying a new car and driving it for five years and 75,000 miles.
But your costs easily could be higher.
Got an SUV? It will cost you about $967 a month, or $11,600 a year, according to AAA.
And don't forget those one-time and infrequent costs not included in the AAA report—say, $10 a pop for a carwash every other month, an occasional parking ticket of, say, $40. Perhaps you're also shelling out for paid parking at the baseball game or a downtown garage. Add $300 a year for those types of charges. Let's just say you avoid budget-busting speeding tickets.
************************************************** ************************************************** *****
There's more at the link.
To me, this really shows the extra expense (I wanted to use the term "folly", but I won't) of a new car, from the time you drive it off the lot (instant depreciation) to when you are insuring it and other things down the road. I've always thought it much better to get a two or three year old car and avoid the several thousand dollars of depreciation, at least.
Once the warranties have expired, repair costs will, of course, be more on a several year old car, but once you get even farther down the road, as we do with our Festivas and Aspires, things can get even better.
Once you have the tools, space, know-how and interest to do your own work, you are pretty much taking what most other car buyers consider "junk" and recrafting it!
Consider this simple list:
New car: $11K to sky's the limit
Two to three year old car: $7K or so on up
Eight to ten year old car: $2K to $4K and up
Over ten years old: How low can we go? Often, just above scrap prices...with under $1K being quite common.
However, while buying a "middle aged" car will invite certain repair costs (often occurring around 75 to 100 thousand miles, depending on how it was taken care of, and buying a really old (usually well over 100K miles) car will too, the older the car and the more experience you have at fixing them, the more boldness in choosing better quality parts, doing more modifications, etc. will be.
Essentially, just here at this site, we have seen folks mostly or even entirely rebuild really old, "junk" cars in a way that used to be thought appropriate only for "collectables."
Think about this.
As we go on, with many of us choosing to stick with Festivas and Aspires (and possibly on to Kia Rios!), now consider our costs taken into the future, amortized over not five to seven years (as many new cars would be), and not even over ten or fifteen years, but over say, TWENTY TO THIRTY YEARS (or more!).
Who knows what the future holds?
Karl, gloating
PS: Just don't get hit by an SUV doing more than 30mph...
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