I've been going back and forth on whether or not I am making a good choice with the new-to-me car purchase that we are planning to do. I feel like it has many mustachian aspects, but then I feel like overall, it's still too much spending.
A little info on my situation - I live in Saudi Arabia - so my resources are not the same as they would be if I lived in a Western country...
Current situation:
We own a 2006 Volvo S40. We bought it last year for $3000. In just over 1 year, we have spent about $1600 in maintenance and repairs (about half the price we spent to purchase it). It has been causing us more trouble lately and we think it has some serious computer/electrical issues going on, as well as, some transmission issues.
Where we live, there is not a Volvo dealership, so there is no place to buy Volvo parts. We found an exclusive Volvo mechanic who has tons of old/broken Volvos and he uses those for parts to fix broken cars. So we usually get 2nd hand parts because it is a huge difference in price.
Here is the plan for buying a new car:
We found a 2014 Hyundai Tuscon. It costs $11600 (about $3000 under what KBB says it's worth).
There are Hyundai dealerships here, but also it's nearly a brand new car, so hopefully wouldn't require any repairs any time soon.
We can not afford to pay the $11600 in one lump sum, but my employer is going to give me an 8mo interest free loan to pay for the car. It must be paid in the 8 mo.
We plan to stay in Saudi for 2 more years, and after 2 years, we will sell this car and we can probably still be able to sell it for about the same as what we will pay for it, so it should be about a 90% return.
We can probably only sell our Volvo for maybe $1500 because of the condition it is presently in - but we would put that straight towards the loan.
Would you consider this a Mustachian purchase? Or is it still frivolous because we cannot buy it straight out?