I noticed it's very popular on this sub to talk about saving money with right car purchases so I thought I'd add my quick story. 11 years ago I bought a 98 Saturn SL2, an ok car at the time, for $2,700 when I was thinking about leasing a nice car. $300 a month was roughly what I'd spend leasing but I decided to buy the Saturn. I still have the car, even though its days are numbered. Doing the math I saved $36,900 over those 12 years just in car payments. If you include insurance costs, that's roughly an extra $7k I saved so that's $43,900. I haven't needed much extra maintenance on it so the I just basically have my maintenance fees negate the extra cost I would've had with registration fees and such. Long story short I saved roughly $4k a year over 11 years. For me saving that amount of money is well worth not driving the latest car. Just because you can afford a monthly payment doesn't necessarily mean you should. If you're looking to save for retirement, kids college education, etc. definitely give buying a cheaper car a chance over leasing a new one. Over the lifetime of the car you will save tens of thousands of dollars. A car is a necessity for most and it's a depreciating asset. Think about it before you lease.
Side note, I went over this with my current girlfriend who leases a Lexus RX. We figured out for everything involving her car she spends about $750 a month on her car. That's $9,000 a year. She can buy a pretty decent car for $9,000 and keep it for 5-10 years and save $60k+.
Submitted September 29, 2017 at 05:28PM by HoosierProud http://ift.tt/2x1vLC1
