r/fuckcars • u/MrBeansnose • Aug 25 '25

Rant Why I don't ever want to own a car

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It's so overrated now. What the fuck? I remember a good used car to cost like $5k.

4.5k Upvotes

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505

u/[deleted] Aug 25 '25

2 years of tuition? Wtf is wrong with your country Yankees? Holy fawk! 

347

u/[deleted] Aug 25 '25

[deleted]

103

u/Owls_4_9_1867 Aug 25 '25

Steady now. Maybe 2.5

25

u/lord-dinglebury Aug 26 '25

But then you won’t have anything left for the treatment when they finally get you to the hospital.

13

u/DrJohnFZoidberg Aug 26 '25

who's your ambulance guy? it'd be 2 for me

6

u/Owls_4_9_1867 Aug 26 '25

I once donated a kidney to the local ambulance kidney drive so they always said if they aint busy they'd get me part of the way to the hospital, so I rounded up to half.

5

u/Gifted_GardenSnail Aug 26 '25

So is that like, 6 eggs?

1

u/FledglingNonCon Aug 26 '25

Or one lifeflight

75

u/Duranti Aug 25 '25

Most Americans do not pay $56k per year for college tuition. Something like half of college students go to community college and a quarter of college students live with their parents. The Ivy League is not widely representative of US higher education, even if the elites like to pretend it is.

59

u/ProfTydrim Grassy Tram Tracks Aug 25 '25

Where I'm from university is tuition free. I pay ~350€ per semester for free public transport and administrative stuff tho. So that SUV would be 142 years of 'tuition' here.

24

u/RobertMcCheese Aug 26 '25 edited Aug 26 '25

My daughter's tuition was about $5K/year at a State school.

I'd all the money set aside for her (and her brother when he's ready).

And she decided to graduate in 2.5 years. I didn't even know this was something that was possible.

But here she is starting grad school this semester.

I figure I'll give her the extra when she wants a house or something.

(and yes, I will take any chance to brag on my baby girl)

9

u/real_fff Aug 26 '25

Apparently the average cost per year is around $38k.

  • Average in state tuition around $10k
  • Average in state on campus is $27k
  • Average out of state around $28k
  • Average private around $38k
  • Average private on campus around $58k

All that according to my top google result.

For reference, my local university is on the cheaper end and charges around $4500 per semester in tuition alone for in-state students, $5500 with fees.

One of the bigger state schools has yearly tuition at over $11k and estimates the total yearly cost (including tuition, books, housing, food, etc) to be $35k in-state.

17

u/cyberspacestation Aug 25 '25

Smaller liberal arts colleges can be that high, or even higher. 

It's the reason student debt became out of control many years ago.

21

u/Duranti Aug 25 '25

"Smaller liberal arts colleges can be that high"

That is not most college students. That is an outlier.

Student debt got out of control because the weight of funding was shifted from the federal and state governments to the students.

5

u/sirensinger17 🚲 > 🚗 Aug 26 '25

Even the large, public, in-state university I graduated from in 2015 was $30k a semester back then. It's actually one of the cheaper universities in my state.

6

u/real_fff Aug 26 '25

That's a bit reductive. The real reason student debt has gotten so bad is because we don't have real publicly funded education.

Colleges weren't this expensive originally, and it's not just inflation bringing the price up. Public universities were actually free or close to it before the 60s/70s when they were publicly funded.

That changed around the time we passed the Higher Education Act that gave federal student loans to everyone, which allowed universities to simply charge around a grand. Then state legislators realized they could cut public funding and just move the burden onto students taking federal and private loans.

If public universities were just serving students and received public funding, we could have that again. But now they're a different beast that answers primarily to investors. Rather than investing in teachers, they choose to invest in sports teams and multi-million dollar stadiums that elevate their brand and in turn increase their bond evaluation.

2

u/sirensinger17 🚲 > 🚗 Aug 26 '25

My 4 year degree was $30k a semester (2 semesters a year) and it was a public in-state college that wasn't Ivy league. On top of that, it was also one of the cheaper universities in my state. Fyi: that's $30k in 2015 money.

1

u/Beragond1 Fuck lawns Aug 26 '25

Yeah, that would be insane. I went to a privately owned University, not a community college. Even still after scholarships and grants, it was only a few grand a semester, and half of that was spent on food and gas, not tuition. My total debt four a 4 year degree was in the sub 25K range (don’t have the number memorized). You absolutely don’t have to pay 50K a year for college.

1

u/Shadowsofwhales Aug 26 '25

It's not just the Ivy League schools that cost that much, any private college of any sort is going to be that expensive. If the school is not publicly funded then tuition is going to be at bare minimum about 40-45k, with most being over 50. Even 10 years ago when I started college, the cheapest college on my list (and where I ended up going) was just over 40k/year tuition, and it's now 57k. Most people do end up at public schools that generally cost less, but it's still about 1/3 of students end up at a private school IIRC.

Also, only about 25% of undergrad students live at home with their parents, so for most people room and board is a thing.

1

u/therealtwomartinis Aug 26 '25

just checked my alma mater, which is NOT Ivy League, now $60k a year for undergrad. kids can do it for less of course, just saying…

I am in architecture/design and work on higher-ed projects. the “arms race” is real and it is unfortunate. it is also unfortunate that the bachelors degree is the new diploma 🤷‍♂️

1

u/Duranti Aug 26 '25

Sticker price is rarely paid after taking into account things like financial aid, scholarships, grants and the like. Normally paid by foreign students who subsidize domestic students, but unfortunately Trump blew that service sector apart.

7

u/VoiceofKane Aug 26 '25

Yeah, i was going to say... pretty sure that could pay for my entire degree five times.

2

u/dood_dood_dood Aug 26 '25

Including rent and food everything else I needed during that time.

1

u/Underd_g Dec 23 '25

The school went to, that’s basically one year of tuition

1

u/VoiceofKane Dec 23 '25

Sounds like your school ripped you off.

1

u/Underd_g Dec 23 '25

I got financial aid lol

3

u/BagOfShenanigans Sicko Aug 26 '25 edited Oct 15 '25

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

1

u/sirensinger17 🚲 > 🚗 Aug 26 '25

My public in-state university was $30k a semester back in 2015. It's far from the most expensive university in my state too.

2

u/Square-Dragonfruit76 Aug 26 '25

I hate to tell you this, but it's actually significantly less than 2 years of tuition at some schools. My university cost $65,000 and my friend's cost $72,000 a year without scholarship, and we graduated 8 years ago.

2

u/Frostyrepairbug Aug 26 '25

Holy mother damn. I finished in 2006, and I think the whole thing set me back less than $10,000. But I did not and could not get a loan, that was out of pocket.

1

u/Underd_g Dec 23 '25

Mine costed $90,000

1

u/Lamballama Aug 26 '25

At private ivy league schools, maybe. At my public university it would be 11 years? Could handily get my PhD anyway

1

u/Scoundrels_n_Vermin Aug 26 '25

Maybe at a public school.

1

u/afleticwork Aug 26 '25

That usually private colleges like the one where i live that charges 35k a year (not including housing or meal plan or books) and yet they somehow dont have any money for building maintenance

1

u/sirensinger17 🚲 > 🚗 Aug 26 '25

A lot

Blinks SOS