A fun comparison could be driving a brand new (has a payment) fuel efficient car (30mpg) 5 miles a day vs. driving an older (paid off) truck/SUV (15mpg) the sam

A fun comparison could be driving a brand new (has a payment) fuel efficient car (30mpg) 5 miles a day vs. driving an older (paid off) truck/SUV (15mpg) the same distance. Over the course of a year (5d/week * 50 weeks) you will spend ~$150 more on fuel for the truck/SUV (used a mpg calculator at $4/gal). Its roughly 2x the fuel cost for this example, you could find a more efficient car but lets do some more simple math on payments. Brand new vs paid off makes no difference on fuel efficiency. However, the average car payment for new cars in 2023 is $716 (holy crap!), so that payment for 5 years ($43k) is going to far outweigh the $150/year you'd "save" by driving a more fuel efficient vehicle. Five years of the fuel for this 15mpg truck example is still only $750 more than the cars fuel, a little over 1 monthly payment. An older vehicle is going to have higher maintenance/repair costs but not $40k more. I assume larger numbers, but similar ratios for planes doing short daily trips.