I get a momentary ad when I first click into the goals section of my Mint account. It always flashes a goal of: $200 a month closer to owning a BMW.
They obviously have no idea how wrong they are.
Me too! "Save for a downpayment on a BMW!" Who the fuck puts a downpayment on a car? If you're financing, they might require a small deposit; that's as far as it goes. Either you can afford it, or you can't...
I was under the impression that in some parts of America cars cost more than houses?
Some cars cost more than some houses in parts of America you probably don't want to live in. Mostly small towns far from any cultural or economic activity, or dangerous inner-city neighborhoods.
Speak for yourself. For less than the cost of many (non luxury brand) cars, I have 25 acres of hardwood forest with mountain views on three sides, clean air to breathe, and no need to consider things like hiking trails or recreational areas because I live in one. Only came with a trailer, true, but we fixed that by building a house. We could easily have gotten a nice house on an acre or so for less than those same cars. Neither a small town nor an inner city.
Just this past weekend I saw a late-model Benz S550 (I think these have a base price around $95k and go up from there) parked in front of a building in Brooklyn that looked like it might fall down any second. It smacked of skewed priorities, but I digress.
Rural, your situation sounds very appealing. May I ask what part of the country you're in? I've been curious about this idea and have begun to do a little research on acquiring land for homesteading/timber/hunting in the northeast, but the property taxes seem to be a big hurdle (especially in NH, where property tax is one of the only taxes they seem to have). Ideally, I'd be right in that goldilocks zone where I could bike into town for supplies, but be far enough away to get a decent-sized plot.
I am also amused by the irony of a car that almost certainly would fit the description of "clown car" being advertised on the site where that term was coined. I feel like Honda and Toyota would have better luck advertising their smaller lines around here. Actually, this website/forum is a pretty concentrated group that is right in their wheelhouse, I detect an opportunity...