this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2026
722 points (99.3% liked)
me_irl
8203 readers
1403 users here now
All posts need to have the same title: me_irl it is allowed to use an emoji instead of the underscore _
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I've always managed to save money doing repairs myself...
Since he does this with two cars, you can probably find a good deal on a used car and spend less in 10 years, on both the car and repairs, than this guy loses in 1.
Seems that annual repair/maintenance costs on a car range between $400-$1200, over 10 years, that's $4000-$12000.
Looks like a new car loses about 12.5-20% value in the first year. So for two $35k cars, for him and his wife, dude loses ~$8800-$14000 in one year. Assuming he probably trades it in, I'd bet its on the higher end of that range. And since the average cost of a new car is $48k, he probably loses more (an additional $3200-$5200 per year). Say he does this for 10 years, that's $88,000-$140,000 (+$32,000-$52,000) he wastes. Nobody spends anywhere near that over the lifetime of a car (average being ~16 years) in repairs. Even if he somehow manages to do much better than these estimates, dude is legit an idiot.
Alternate take: he could be a really shrewd buyer and good at selling privately.
Probably not, but it's possible. I knew a guy whose hobby was entirely cars. Shopping for them, going through financing details, and sometimes buying them. He'd bolt on some mods and seemed to have a knack for finding buyers. He'd sometimes sell for more than the total amount he'd put into the vehicle.
He had almost no real understanding of cars. At most, he could do an oil change and slap on a K&N filter. But goddamn did that guy ever understand how to manipulate financing to his advantage.