To be charitable: a large percentage of Americans are acculturated into continuous high monthly outlays to own an acceptably large and new vehicle. A car paymen

To be charitable: a large percentage of Americans are acculturated into continuous high monthly outlays to own an acceptably large and new vehicle. A car payment is just an unfortunate fact of life to a lot of them, and not a lifestyle choice. I grew up seeing my parents with near-continuous car payments, and started to continue the cycle with my own nearly-new car purchase two weeks after starting my first post-college job. Why, a junior IT consultant needs a nice car! It wouldn't do at all to be seen driving a 12 year old Camry! Fortunately, dating and then marrying a sensible German who bought his first car at the ripe old age of 32 (several years old, really small) helped reform me, and I'm now on board with a program of buying a 3-4 year old car with low mileage and driving it until it starts having expensive, difficult-to-solve problems. Germany has long had a large pool of such vehicles fresh off corporate leases and with good maintenance histories. Current ride when I'm not pushing a stroller: 2017 Ford Focus wagon, modified by Ford to run on LPG, which is currently half the price of gasoline or diesel. I'm rather proud of that one: I picked it out last summer, when LPG was somewhat, but not wildly, cheaper to burn than gasoline.