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.
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:
Never buy new. Buy approximately two years old used low mileage
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
Car must be used, for sale by private seller. Avoids dealership fees, warranty fees etc.
If I cannot buy it in full, in cash that day, I cannot afford it.
I bought my first car on credit. After my last payment, I diverted that money into dedicated savings for the next car. Kept me from lifestyle creep and paid myself interest instead of the bank.
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.
They can also change things, like idle speed. You also need one for any form of electric vehicle.
Maybe an interesting aside, i have an associate who makes a living being the guy mechanics call. When they can't figure out how to do what the computer is telling them to do, they have a contract with his company where he'll walk them thru the repair. He can see all the data from their shop obdii thingy too, and helps troubleshoot remotely.
He says the effect of this system over the years (in his experience) is that in-shop mechanics are increasingly untrained guys 'off the street' who 'don't know shit from shit'
Just thought that was an interesting tidbit about the industry or even a sign of the future of that job
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.
Bro genuinely bought a Nissan trying to avoid excessive maintenance 💀
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.
Brand new cars in 1973 were like $2500 ($17000 in today’s dollar). No one wants to sell compacts in the US anymore because people love their giant SUVs.
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
Don't look up "rolling coal".
Really wish I had those EMP things from 2F2F to use on those useless coal rolling fuckheads.
It's the most Republican thing you can do with a car, except maybe driving into protesters.
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.
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
Hard to find a decent manual in my area for sub-10, too. Lucked out on a 20-year old f150 with very little wrong with it for 4 grand, then another 4 grand to fix it up.
Would've spend 7 grand on a Ranger with a machinegun rod knock.
I blame trucks.
Right. Cars aren't really on the market. These cramped, low visibility, shit-mileage behemoths are the reigning force on the market now.
– and right up my chuff.
It's self inflicted. Americans don't buy inexpensive new cars. Now everything new is targeted at upper middle class and financing is expensive + pent up demand from COVID is exacerbating the issue pushing used buyers into the new market.
But you can still buy a Mitsubishi for under 20k and an Impreza for 22k. People don't.
On the other hand, the world could have its first trillionaire within the decade!
And you know how like 1 billion seconds is 31.7 years...guess how many 1 trillion seconds is in years...
...you ready?
A little under 31,690 years
But unlike Americans living in an unaffordable country, our future trillionaire earned it...right?
For added context: 1 million seconds is "just" 11.6 days.
100,000 seconds is 27.8 hours.
10,000 seconds is 2.8 hours.
Y-….you guys used to be able to afford cars?
not to mention insurance costs and taxes
used vehicles cost nearly same in most cases and in poor condition
yes let us blame trucks not the $7.50 minimum wage and the inflation and what have yous
biden and electric vehicle are not the jesus of our times
going to take a lot to make travel affordable again and on that note the more traveling costs the less people do it and the less they travel the more stuck in the state they are at they become
way more than prohibitively expensive vehicles here this is a means to keep citizens in place and poor
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