s. I know personally very rich people who drive old Mercedes or old Volvo and do not care about car brand because they are excited for their life and success, for their families and friends and they do not need to show that to others. (Others see it anyway, lol)
How do you think rich people get old Mercedes and Volvos? By buying new ones a long time ago. My experience with old money/wealthy people, and I grew up in a place with lots of them, is that they would buy moderately expensive cars (think $50-75k in current money) and keep them like 10 years. Lots of Mercedes and Volvos (esp. wagons in both brands), as well as high-end American cars and large American SUVs. And Toyota Land Cruisers, stealthy rich people LOVE Land Cruisers.
$50,000 to $75,000 is
MODERATELY expensive for a new car? Really?
If it costs 4 to 6 times the price of a perfectly good new car, it's not moderately expensive in my book. It's insanely expensive!
A $75,000 car for 10 years averages to $7,500 per year assuming a cash or 0% interest purchase.
I could buy a perfectly good new car for just 2 years of that cost and be investing $7,500 a year for the next 8 years!
At 8% compounded annually, that's about $79,776 in savings!
Or, to make it a more fair comparison, let's assume we have $75,000 in cash to buy the car and only spend $15,000, leaving $60,000 to invest.
In ten years we could expect that to be about $129,535.
That's a darn expensive car!