Amusingly, renting an uber to carry your friends, at $2 a mile, is only cost effective if you plan to haul your friends around more than 5500 miles over the life of the vehicle.
In your last post here, I recommended a used Toyota Prius. You stated you were unconcerned with mileage costs because you were not intending to drive many miles.
Why are you looking at new vehicles? The cost advantage of used is even higher when you plan to not drive many miles, because the components of cost are:
(interest, depreciation, fuel, insurance, repairs). Interest and insurance are higher for new cars, and are the same regardless of if you drive them 0 miles per year or 20k. Depreciation has 2 components : (calendar depreciation, mileage depreciation). Calendar depreciation is usually a larger effect.
Conversely, if you drive a car very little, fuel and repairs are lower. Only the cost of repairs goes up with older cars. The other 4 terms are cheaper.
It is irrational to your goals to be considering new cars.
Sure. But for self-financing what you can see right away is that a used vehicle in good condition, with under 75k miles, will (depends on the make/model) usually be less than 40% of it’s original purchase price. With typical service lifespans of ~250k miles (average car is 12 years old, meaning that vehicles are on average crushed at 24 years, and is driven 13.5k a year) it means you are typically getting a vehicle with just 30% of it’s life used up but for ~60% less money.
And yeah, you can plunk down less than 10k—I suggest https://www.cargurus.com/, it’s what I used—and get something that will work.
Amusingly, renting an uber to carry your friends, at $2 a mile, is only cost effective if you plan to haul your friends around more than 5500 miles over the life of the vehicle.
In your last post here, I recommended a used Toyota Prius. You stated you were unconcerned with mileage costs because you were not intending to drive many miles.
Why are you looking at new vehicles? The cost advantage of used is even higher when you plan to not drive many miles, because the components of cost are:
(interest, depreciation, fuel, insurance, repairs). Interest and insurance are higher for new cars, and are the same regardless of if you drive them 0 miles per year or 20k. Depreciation has 2 components : (calendar depreciation, mileage depreciation). Calendar depreciation is usually a larger effect.
Conversely, if you drive a car very little, fuel and repairs are lower. Only the cost of repairs goes up with older cars. The other 4 terms are cheaper.
It is irrational to your goals to be considering new cars.
No, I agree! We shouldn’t get a new car.
(I wasn’t properly accounting for interest or depreciation; self-financing makes them less obvious)
Sure. But for self-financing what you can see right away is that a used vehicle in good condition, with under 75k miles, will (depends on the make/model) usually be less than 40% of it’s original purchase price. With typical service lifespans of ~250k miles (average car is 12 years old, meaning that vehicles are on average crushed at 24 years, and is driven 13.5k a year) it means you are typically getting a vehicle with just 30% of it’s life used up but for ~60% less money.
And yeah, you can plunk down less than 10k—I suggest https://www.cargurus.com/, it’s what I used—and get something that will work.