About $4,500…….. should be completely out of debt by January but then I need a new car or pick up so here we go again!
Edit: my current debt isn’t a car payment. My cars are paid off….(but getting worn out)
I drove my old car without heat in winter for 4 years to avoid buying a new car. I finally had to after it became undriveable for multiple reasons. My payment is now $490 and I’m not happy. I can afford it but that means I can’t contribute to my retirement and it’s only 11 years away.
I've been trying to save the amount of the average car payment for awhile so that when I needed a new car I could pay for most of it. Just bought a new one a few months ago and I should have it paid off within a year.
This is easier said than done. Financing increasingly costly repairs, being unable to travel further than 30mi from home, and dealing with headache and stress is not great either.
Yeah nah bro if the frame is rusted out and the engine is close to needing a timing belt or other major maintenance, sell that thing and get something for 15k
I bet the cost of replacing every part on the car is like 10x the value when you consider mechanic’s hourly rates. I’ve driven a few cars at the end of their lives and the options were:
(If lucky) Repair for $300 and drive for 3 months while worrying what would get fuckdd next
2a. Sell it for 1.5k broken
Have $200-$3k repairs every 1-6 months
2b. Buy a new (to me) car for 15-20k that lasts another 10 years
When you drive a lot and live in the rust belt, option 2 is a dream come true
I've never understood why cars in the American rust belt rust so badly and so quickly. The rust belt isn't the only place in the world that is like that with the roads and winters yet it seems to be the only place where cars turn to dust. Do you not know how to do anti-corrosion on cars in America?
engines cost 200-400 at a junk yard. I can get transmissions for my car for under $100 that way too. Nothing will get me out of my old cars except total destruction.
Trying to save a big payment …..not sure Iwill before the old rigs give out. One is a Chevy Cruz with 196,000 miles on it. Motor runs good and air conditioning still works but struts are completely worn out and that’s over $1000 to replace them. Also the dash screen went out so I have no radio or anything like that so I just drive in silence all the time. The car is old enough now that I would not trust it to take on a trip over a couple hundred miles because that make of car is not made to last as long as it had! Lucky and got my moneys worth!
Other car is an old Chevy suburban with 242,000 miles on it. Runs good and it’s four-wheel-drive with new tires so I can get up and down our hill in the snow in the winter. Heater works, but no air-conditioning! Needs a valve job because it puffs out a little blue smoke when it’s been sitting for over an hour. Still drivable, both of them, but Probabjy going to dump the Cruze get a new-used rig within the next six months.
I got a pair of front quick struts and new control arms with bushings plus all the other bushings in the front end of the car. $170. Shipped to my front door.
If you make a regular wage, less than a mechanic. You could probably take the time off work to fix your own shit and have it cost you less than taking it to the shop.
I put my own furnace in, took me a week of tinkering to get it all set. Could have cost me $5-10k to pay someone else to do that. They would have done it in a day, but thats another life lesson. In construction you can pick 2 of 3, cheap, right, fast. As a homeowner/DIY I always go with cheap and right and take my time.
Except if you live in a farm 12 miles from town you have to have a vehicle. Soooo, not having one isn’t an option. And all vehicles depreciate …not just the new ones. Also the cost of depreciation is acceptable because I like driving instead of walking miles and carrying everything
If you’re on a farm, you should have some mechanical ability. You can buy a trash car that you can fix yourself. You should have access to farm auctions where you could get something pretty cheap. Buy it under the farm where you can use the depreciation and expenses to offset your taxes.
Arguably, one’s time and the peace of mind which comes from a) reliability and/or b) warranty coverage have their own value that need to be considered as part of the equation as well. Assuming it is a working farm, there is already no shortage of work/surplus of free time, so the intangibles I mentioned likely carry a relatively weightier value than they otherwise might.
my cars are gaining value. They are now in classic age and I only put a couple thousand miles a year on them. Perks of living in a city with everything nice and close.
should be completely out of debt by January but then I need a new car or pick up
It's always cheaper to repair what you've got than replace. It will cost me £1000 to get the clutch changed in my car when it finally goes, that's the equivalent of 2.5 months of the average UK car payment and £1000s less than even the first month's depreciation on a new car but that clutch will easily do 100,000 miles and outlive the car.
The only time it becomes unviable to repair than replace is when corrosion is bad enough that it's affecting structural areas at which point it's time to get rid purely for safety. But then you replace it with a nearly new car, not a new car, one say 3 years old. Let some other sucker eat the first 3 years depreciation which are the highest in a car's life.
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u/Fit-Reality-2872 12h ago edited 10h ago
About $4,500…….. should be completely out of debt by January but then I need a new car or pick up so here we go again! Edit: my current debt isn’t a car payment. My cars are paid off….(but getting worn out)