You might be surprised how well certain cars hold their value if you take care of them, even pretty low-end sports cars. Go look at listings for a vintage Supra

You might be surprised how well certain cars hold their value if you take care of them, even pretty low-end sports cars. Go look at listings for a vintage Supra, M3, even an 80s Trans Am Firebird. They're all selling for much more than they were originally purchased for. They may not be a good investment relative to holding a broad equity index tracking fund, but if you need to own some sort of car, they're a good investment compared to most any other type of car. Likewise with the house. While you probably shouldn't be saturating your entire take home pay with mandatory recurring payments, you're a lot better off spending on assets that hold their value than buying vacations and dinners at expensive restaurants. This is yet another underappreciated difference between what "paycheck to paycheck" means for the affluent versus the poor. There's a big difference between spending all your money on nice houses and cars versus spending it all on rent that buys your landlord a house and beaters that require more in maintenance than purchase price and will be scrapped at best when you finish running it into the ground.