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.
As a young adult in Europe (the place where walking and biking safely is possible), my rules were:
I am entirely convinced US cities were design by the car lobby.
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.
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.
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
Yeah, but I'm a real man's man and I have to have a very large truck to hide my small manhood. 'Murica!
Cain’t git uh cuntry gurl wit no sissy moe bill.
I'm not a real man unless I have two bank notes in the $80k-$100k range each.
Couldn't buy a house, so now we have to rent. Now that we can't afford rent, might as well live out of a car. Now cars are too expensive, might as well live out of a cardboard box.
Owner Class: “Hey - it should trickle down any minute. I know you’ve been waiting 50 years for it, but it’s gonna come this time. Meanwhile, please subscribe to our Cardboard-Box-as-a-Service.”
EDIT: Oops, I just got back from my beating. My owners wanted me to add an additional addendum:
“Cardboard-Box-as-a-Service (CBaaS) has some additional benefits. Our free tier allows you access to the box, along with special promotions from our sponsors that will play inside the box. Parking comes as an extra service in order to comply with the law. We will provide details on what surcharges you can expect, but our partner providers can communicate what rental fees for land for the CBaaS entail.”
“Our Premium Tier will remove ads. And finally our Super Premium Tier includes a bidet. Water service for the bidet is included with up to 10 bidet cycles per user, with additional licensing available for additional fees. Water pressure may be throttled when many concurrent users are using their bidet. We will release new details on additional plans to increase your booty stream priority, once we figure out how much we can get away with.”
I am tempted to save this comment just to see how accurate it is in ten years.
"Yea, but the rents are outrageous" - Bender, Futurama
Bezos just saw this post and cardboard box prices just tripled. Thanks a lot.
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.
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.
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?
Americans can no longer afford ~~their 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
yes let us blame trucks not the $7.50 minimum wage and the inflation and what have yous
¿Por qué no los dos?
According to an October report by Market Watch, Americans needed an annual income of at least $100,000 to afford a car, at least if they're following standard budgeting advice, which says you shouldn't spend more than 10 percent of your monthly income on car-related expenses.
This is a dumb way to determine whether someone can "afford" a car.
Y-….you guys used to be able to afford cars?
NEW cars. Used market is just fine but people always want that new new.
Absolute losers LOL
Someone is stuck in 2010s. The used car market has been ridiculously hot and not buyer friendly for several years now.
I haven't looked in 8 years. I am too afraid. Plan to just throw money at my existing car until I die.
Have you looked recently? For the past few years buying new was actually cheaper than buying used, and factoring in manufacturer subsidized interest rates, the difference in the current market still makes new a viable option, unless you're looking at 10+ year old cars (which still start north of $10k these days).
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