The advice given for this post was the following:
"I know this seems like an extreme stance, but borrowing money to buy a very expensive thing that plummets in value is an extreme strategy for burning money. So an extreme response is called for! Ok, but what if you NEED a car and you don’t have any MONEY? What do you do? The average US new car payment is $716/month. Let’s say you’re broke and can only afford half that, or a $350/month payment. Here’s what you do: • First four months: Don’t have a car. Bus, bike, borrow, barter, and beg your way to where you need to go. I know it sucks. But it’s only four months of your entire life and it means you get to be a millionaire later. Humans were around for 6 million years without cars. You can do four months. Put your $350/month in a savings account. • Month five: Take the $1,400 you saved and find a deal on a clunker that runs. Boom. You have a car, and zero debt. Keep saving $350/month. • Year one: Sell your $1,400 clunker for about $1,400. Combine it with the $2,800 now in your savings account and buy a perfectly decent $4,200 car. (I drove a $3,000 car for six years). Keep saving your $350/month. • Year three: Sell your $4,200 car for $3,000. Take your $11,400 and buy a really darn nice used car. You can get a 3-4 year old car that looks and drives like new. Drive it for five years. Keep saving your $350 • Five years later: Take the $21,000 you have saved, plus the $7K or so from your last car and buy yourself a $28,000 car you want. When you repeat that last step, you’ll end up with EXTRA money and you’ll be able to invest the rest and become a millionaire. See, now wasn’t riding the bus for four months all those years ago worth it? You can tell your kids about all the character you built and all the nice bus people you met. As always, reminding you to build wealth by following the two PFC rules: 1.) Live below your means and 2.) Invest early and often.
- Jeremy"
Better advice:
If your life doesn’t require or desperately want one to fill a hole in your life, don’t buy one.
If your life does require a car, buy a cheap one that’s mechanically in as good of shape as you can find. The advice from the original was sound except for the $1400 car. Fuck that shit unless you know it is mechanically sound and free of serious rust (more than surface rust). Save up for the next tier. For reference, mine was $2000 in 2005. A quick inflation calculator says $3200 is equivalent now. Be patient and you can find something suitable. Try to stick to more reliable brands from the era it was made (avoid Ford and Chevy in general after the 2000s, Subarus are good until the mid 2000s, then get better after ~2010, Toyota is almost always a solid pick, avoid Audi and BMW because parts are expensive).
Learn to fix your car, starting with routine maintenance. Manuals for how to do this are available for $20-30 at any big box auto shop for most cars unless they are newer. For anything else, go to YouTube and/or forums specific to your car. Buy parts and maintenance supplies from cheap online wholesalers or similar such as rockauto.com.
Drive your car until it dies. Mine’s been going strong for 20 years now (it was over 10 years old when I bought it) and I was not nice to it for the first 5-10 years. If you are really about saving money, why in the fuck are you buying a $20000 car when that could go to savings or investments??? Get your head on straight. Think this is a ridiculous stance because some people want nice cars, see sentence one.