I've never understood buying a car on credit. My car's 17 years old now. Bought it when it was 8 years old. Insurance is €390/yr.

Or you can take the train, walk or bike. All of which are much much cheaper.

“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. 🤦🏻‍♂️

I was looking for a new car a few years ago, but i didn't have to rush, i didn't have a car for almost two years and just used my work car if i really needed one. Then covid hit and i was still sometimes browsing cars. People were selling the cars they no longer can afford and i was fucking shocked to see people selling cars saying that the monthly pay off is like 1200 or shit like that. Who would think that is a good idea? If you can afford it there is no reason to pay it off, and if you can't, it's too expensive. That is just the car payment, no insurance or road fees or anything.

I care about what kind of car i drive and all of mine are broken because they're old garbage.

I pay about $450 a month for my mini cargo van and another $80-ish for insurance. I also drive about 3,000 miles a month (my commute is long and I spend most weekends out of town helping my parents), so I average about 350 dollars a month in gas. Let's call it another 100 a month on average for maintenance (I do my own oil, the tires are pretty cheap, but there will be occasional large expenses).

So that comes out to pretty close to a thousand dollars a month total. That's a lot of money.

But by living in the middle of the country far from work, I can rent a trailer home that costs about $1500/month less than a tiny apartment close enough to work to walk or bike, and I have the freedom of owning a car and being able to go anywhere and haul anything I need.

So yeah, it's expensive, but it would be even more expensive NOT to have it.

Never buying a vehicle I can't pay upfront for again if I can help it. Hated those payments the first time I had to go through it. I do more real work with my 80's era pickup than the yuppies who need their "toy haulers" do that sit almost twice as high. Plus, once I get the diesel swapped in and I'm running biodiesel, I have less emissions as well. Did you know that modern American diesels are so tuned for regular diesel that they can't run biodiesel? I assume the Euro models can though.

I'm actually looking to move from owning to leasing a car because it's been false economy. The maintenance costs and stress have been so high as to make it cheaper to pay a few hundred quid each month.

Uhhh... I pay less than that per YEAR for insurance on two motorcycles. Fuck cars, indeed.

The hell are these people driving? I pay $240/mo for a goddamn Lexus.

Insurance varies a lot with what you drive, where, amount of coverage, and history of driving.

Mine is around $800/year and I drive nothing to brag about. (Well, except cost of ownership and safety record. Knock on wood). But my partner pays more because they have more coverage and a newer car worth covering.

But if you think $350/month is high, let me introduce you to private health insurance. 😂

I had no idea my insurance is so much. But it is a lot. If I think about it I'll get angry.

You can take defensive driving courses to lower it though.