I haven't bought a car for more than $2,500 in decades. In Minnesota all those decades, with snow and salt problems. I have had to educate mechanics in person b

I haven't bought a car for more than $2,500 in decades. In Minnesota all those decades, with snow and salt problems. I have had to educate mechanics in person by paying mechanics on the internet to answer questions. I do keep a spare car so I don't have to buy one in a hurry when one is on the way out. Only once bought a car from a family member in that time. But it's pretty well established that near end-of-life cars are cheaper on an annual basis than at other points in their lifespan. I don't know anything about cars myself. Never worked on one. By buying before I need to (mostly) negotiation is easier. I can wait for the right price. My biggest mistake was buying a (probably) repaired-after-crash car for $2,000 and not reselling it soon enough—everything kind of went at once. Best buy was $100 for a non-running car that a mechanic had been puzzled by that needed only $450 to fix, and is still running, five years later. (It did have a windshield crack that was hit by a tree branch before I could pay to get it repaired, so additional luck there—insurance covered the branch situation, but not the pre-existing crack). All this said, I'm considering buying a new Model 3.