Personal Finance

This was exactly the calculus I was doing with my wife in 2017~2018. Her car was a fourth-hand 2003 Hyundai Elantra which had been run in to the ground before she ever even got it (but to be fair, it was both free and better than what she was driving before). I was looking at used car prices and thinking, is it really worth it to save less than $5k when I get a car that's 5 years newer with 50,000 fewer miles and all of its warranty in-tact? The PF advice I was seeing at that time was maddening, and mirrored a lot of what you're saying - "cars lose half their value off the lot, buy a used civic for $5k and drive the wheels off" - but that had already not existed for years. And then the pandemic supercharged used car prices and they just sort of never came back down. And then rates went up and they still won't come down.

We ended up buying a brand new 2019 Impreza in an undesirable color for $19k, financed with nothing down and 0.9%. Now it's paid off, I feel like in retrospect it was very much the right call.

I’m on the very last life of my current car and I’ve been watching prices. To compare, I bought my current car for 8k. It had 99k miles on it and it has lasted 10 years with no major service other than an A/C compressor.

Granted the market 10 years ago was a lot different, but there is nothing in my area that I would feel comfortable financing for under 20k. At that point I can get a brand new Versa or Corolla for a few grand more. With either of those I get a warranty and brand new components. It’s not even a question which is the better deal.

Yeah, it's very much YMMV. I got a Prius for ~$10k w/ <60K miles about 10 years ago, and new models were going for >2x that (I think MSRP was ~$25k). It now has 145k miles and has needed practically no repairs (maybe $2k?). So at the time, used was absolutely a better deal.

Today, a similar car would go for >$20k, and MSRP is similar ($28k-ish). So today, buying new is absolutely a better deal, if I can get it for MSRP (pretty big if these days).

So if I can get more than half of the useful life for significantly less than half of MSRP, used makes a ton of sense. But that's not really a thing today. Had I bought new when I bought my car, I could probably get $20k+ for it today. I didn't, so I can only really get $5k or so, but that's still a great deal given that I put on nearly 100k miles over ~10 years.

I plan to drive my car until it dies, so I'm basically saving $15k or so buying used. If I bought today though, I'd buy new because used doesn't make financial sense to me.

Good point, I know you can find metrics on the average mileage cost of a car, including gas, maintenance, insurance, depreciation, etc. But I would be curious to see how those numbers fluctuate throughout the life of the vehicle. That is, what is the marginal cost of a mile, based on the already existing mileage. Based on the vehicle, you could plot the marginal mile cost structure, similar to how you would plot a yield curve.

I can tell by your writing that you’re a rational person and you’ve obviously thought about things. But…I’m not sure we’re arguing about the same thing.

The point is that you would previously be able to buy a new car for say $20k or a used one for $5k. The used one might drive nearly as well as the new one, if properly maintained. So you were “saving” $15k.

The idea that brand new items can lose value to their “steady-state” value (imagine a graph that sharply descends in the first year) isn’t an absurd one.

That said, I understand that some people might value that “new feeling” and want to pay that $15k difference. Or might value their time and troubles in potentially dealing with the issues of a used car.

Of course, people are raising the issue that the market might have changed recently. I don’t really follow the pricing of new cars. I remember a few years ago hearing that the car industry was in trouble because essentially cars were lasting longer and longer and so they were unable to keep on selling the new models to suckers.

*adddages

Yup. My wife and I both own Subarus, we get "please let us buy your car!" letters from local dealerships on a monthly basis and have been since we bought hers in 2018.

I bought used in December 2020. 6 months later, the dealership called me with an offer $3k higher than the sticker price I saw. It was madness for a while!

We have had one for a long time but give my wifes medical conditions we will continue to have one. Would love not to though.

That's basically a lease. Although it might not be a bad idea to lease an EV. It's basically a battery with wheels. The battery will die someday, and when it does you may be better off getting a newer car with newer tech vs. replacing the battery in your older one.

They definitely shouldn't have flipped out at you about it, but that doesn't mean they were wrong. Vehicles almost never appreciate in value; it just so happens that you accidentally timed the used car market perfectly.

If you expect that to continue happening you're in for a surprise.

Luckily, it sounds like you knew what you were doing and had some mechanic experience.

That ended 14 years ago.

The car companies just moved up market, nobody cares about affordable cars.

Then inflation didn’t help.

For sure a 10-year-old used car in 2023 is massively safer than a 10-year-old used car in 2003. I don't know if that can possibly explain how that 10yo used car in 2003 was $1000 (5% of 20ish k MSRP) and an equivalent 10yo used car in 2023 is $20k (75% of 30ish k MSRP - 20k inflation adjusted from 1993 to 2013). Of course these numbers are ~~vibes based~~ approximations and anecdotal, but it's kind of my impression.

I would think the safety argument is already generally accounted for by inflation - Euro NCAP, NHTSA, etc. has been going pretty strong since the 90s. I don't know if I buy that backup cameras and blind spot monitoring becoming standard in the late 2010s suddenly made cars retain all their value, because new cars got those features but the MSRPs of those cars was basically just increasing at ~the rate of inflation. Also while these cars are getting safer, they're getting much more expensive to maintain, which you would expect to drive down used car prices. It's strange for sure. The pandemic can't bear the entire blame either though, since it was a trend that started before it. 2020 just supercharged it.

suddenly a few safety features later

I'm curious what safety features in particular you consider necessary? I ask because all of the modern stuff you list (blind spot monitoring, brake assist, lane keep assist, adaptive cruise control) I'd argue are hardly necessary for anyone. Blind spot monitoring can be replaced by a $10 pair of blind spot mirrors and everything else is more of a convenience feature or something that can be replaced by instilling good habits into your teen about keeping attention on the road and not getting distracted with her phone or fiddling with the radio.