After those 10 years, you can ostensibly sell the car when you feel it has outlived its usefulness to you. Whether you can then sell that car for $8,000 (and t

After those 10 years, you can ostensibly sell the car when you feel it has outlived its usefulness to you. Whether you can then sell that car for $8,000 (and thus finance your next vehicle down payment with it) or have to scrap it for $500 has a huge impact on your total cost of owning a vehicle. The loan payments are factored into our sum of car payments, registration, insurance, gas, and maintenance already, yes, but some of your down payment should be factored into the annual cost. Not all of it, because then you'd be ignoring the value of the car when you sell it. The resulting factor in the sum is equal to the depreciation of the vehicle.