4 ms·

Best way is to drive it until it breaks and then you'll find out. In the meantime, save up some money for your next car. I don't get why people have this minds

by smiler 15y ago

Best way is to drive it until it breaks and then you'll find out. In the meantime, save up some money for your next car. I don't get why people have this mindset 'I best replace my car before it starts costing me money'. Even an expensive repair of $2000 is a _lot_ cheaper than investing $20,000+ in a new car. Plus it's not as if you're forced to pay the repair. If it is expensive, you can just scrap it and then spend that 20k you've been saving. I drove my last car into the ground and will do the same with this one.

krschultz 15y ago
You are ignoring resale value. I'll walk you through my math using 15,000 miles a year on my Subaru Forester. I bought my 2004 Forester XS with 70,000 miles on it for $9300 (KBB very good or excellent condition at purchase, but that was actual price paid to seller on Craigslist). I have exactly 100,000 on it right now. In between I've done about $1000 in non-scheduled maitenance & repairs (new A/C compressor, and an O2 sensor) that are related to the age of the car. I will ignore about $1000 in regular maitenance (oil changes, automatic transmission changes, new set of tires, new belts). Based on the current value on Craigslist, I can get easily $7500 for it. So I will have lost $1800 on the price of the car and $1000 on repairs over 2 years. That's only $1500 a year or $116 a month which is not bad. But over the next 45,000 miles, the car repairs are going to pick up. Timing belt change and a new exhaust are both looming which is around $1500. Plus what do you get for a car with 150,000 miles on it, $3000? $4000? So lets say over the next 3 years I will spend $2k on maitenance and the price will drop from the current $7500 to $4k. 3.5k in depreciation and $2k in maitenance is $5.5k over 3 years and around $152 a month. Obviously the car is getting more costly, and that is assuming I can get $4000 for the car with 145,000 miles on it which is asking a lot. More likely it will cost more like $180 a month. So now we're talking about $180 a month for a car with somewhere between 100,000 and 145,000 miles on it. I used to pay $206 a month for a brand new Mazda 6 on lease that I put $500 down on. As a skier I like the Subaru but you'd be hard pressed to convince me a car with 20,000 miles on it is not worth $40 more a month than a car with 120,000 miles on it. For comparison the original owner had to do basically no repairs and got 70,000 miles for a depreciation from $24,000 to $9300. So he lost around $267 a month. He may have even been better off leasing 2 cars during that time period. Take your car, pull up the kelly blue book, and graph it out by year in Excel. Everyone knows that depreciation is not linear and that the 1st year is a killer, but a lot of people don't realize there are several plateaus in the price. If you buy and and sell the car on either end of a plateau you will lose very little. I holding a bit too long on this car, I should have sold it 5k miles ago or right now, but I really want it for the winter for skiing and I want to sell it in the spring and have no car at all next summer which is of course the cheapest option of all. *Note I did the math owning the car start to finish, that would be $24,000 for the car and probably $4k for repairs over the life of the car (lets say 175,000 miles). That's 12 years with the same car and it costs roughly $200 a month. Personally after 12 years I would be quite bored with a car, but you can see it's not always the absolute cheapest option. I personally prefer to keep buying good quality/condition used cars coming off lease or the first owner and hold them for 2-3 years and then sell them.
- rdl 15y ago
  I also highly value having a reliable car. If my car breaks once a month and makes me late to a meeting, it's more expensive than leasing a new S4. A 2-7y old Honda Civic, well maintained, is probably the sweet spot for price/reliability for basic transportation.

by smiler 15y ago

krschultz 15y ago

You are ignoring resale value. I'll walk you through my math using 15,000 miles a year on my Subaru Forester. I bought my 2004 Forester XS with 70,000 miles on it for $9300 (KBB very good or excellent condition at purchase, but that was actual price paid to seller on Craigslist). I have exactly 100,000 on it right now. In between I've done about $1000 in non-scheduled maitenance & repairs (new A/C compressor, and an O2 sensor) that are related to the age of the car. I will ignore about $1000 in regular maitenance (oil changes, automatic transmission changes, new set of tires, new belts). Based on the current value on Craigslist, I can get easily $7500 for it. So I will have lost $1800 on the price of the car and $1000 on repairs over 2 years. That's only $1500 a year or $116 a month which is not bad. But over the next 45,000 miles, the car repairs are going to pick up. Timing belt change and a new exhaust are both looming which is around $1500. Plus what do you get for a car with 150,000 miles on it, $3000? $4000? So lets say over the next 3 years I will spend $2k on maitenance and the price will drop from the current $7500 to $4k. 3.5k in depreciation and $2k in maitenance is $5.5k over 3 years and around $152 a month. Obviously the car is getting more costly, and that is assuming I can get $4000 for the car with 145,000 miles on it which is asking a lot. More likely it will cost more like $180 a month. So now we're talking about $180 a month for a car with somewhere between 100,000 and 145,000 miles on it. I used to pay $206 a month for a brand new Mazda 6 on lease that I put $500 down on. As a skier I like the Subaru but you'd be hard pressed to convince me a car with 20,000 miles on it is not worth $40 more a month than a car with 120,000 miles on it. For comparison the original owner had to do basically no repairs and got 70,000 miles for a depreciation from $24,000 to $9300. So he lost around $267 a month. He may have even been better off leasing 2 cars during that time period. Take your car, pull up the kelly blue book, and graph it out by year in Excel. Everyone knows that depreciation is not linear and that the 1st year is a killer, but a lot of people don't realize there are several plateaus in the price. If you buy and and sell the car on either end of a plateau you will lose very little. I holding a bit too long on this car, I should have sold it 5k miles ago or right now, but I really want it for the winter for skiing and I want to sell it in the spring and have no car at all next summer which is of course the cheapest option of all. *Note I did the math owning the car start to finish, that would be $24,000 for the car and probably $4k for repairs over the life of the car (lets say 175,000 miles). That's 12 years with the same car and it costs roughly $200 a month. Personally after 12 years I would be quite bored with a car, but you can see it's not always the absolute cheapest option. I personally prefer to keep buying good quality/condition used cars coming off lease or the first owner and hold them for 2-3 years and then sell them.

rdl 15y ago
I also highly value having a reliable car. If my car breaks once a month and makes me late to a meeting, it's more expensive than leasing a new S4. A 2-7y old Honda Civic, well maintained, is probably the sweet spot for price/reliability for basic transportation.