Blows my mind every time. I only ever had a car payment once because I was tackling higher interest debt at the time so I financed my used Corolla because the math made sense despite feeling very wrong. Plus the dealership was willing to throw in winter tires if I financed.
Life isn't all softdrinks and mango's, I had a new car with accompanying car payment. It was a five year loan at 6% because the dealership wanted 8%. The bank also allowed early payment without extra cost. Since I wanted to buy a house I payed the 10K loan off in 7 months - growing a mustache before knowing about it :D
Couple of years back we swapped our perfectly good Hyundai for a Nissan Leaf (full electric) because the investment would've paid itself back in 3 years. It's nice when an investment (in this case in lowering emissions) is also effective in cutting cost.
I don't understand this reply in the context of my previous replies.
My point wasn't to never get a car loan, my point was that I don't understand how people are so cavalier about getting a car loan and perceive it as a default state.
People treat a car loan the same way they conceptualize rent or a mortgage payment, that it's a given. I've heard countless people say things like "I'm so excited that my payments will be up on my car next year, it's time to trade it in and get a new one! I can't wait!"
The last time someone said this to me I was driving a 13 year old Buick Century and I was actually admiring her much newer Honda Civic, and here she is telling me how eager she is to trade it in because it's "old" and she "needs something new."
This was a newly divorced, single mother, who was also complaining about having to rent a partial-basement townhouse because she couldn't afford to buy after the divorce.
And yet to her, it was so much a default to have a car payment that she was getting all excited for the fact that she could justify buying a whole new, unnecessary car instead of freeing up that payment and driving her perfectly nice Civic for another decade.
I've heard this shit for so many years, it blows my mind.
I've financed a car, but only because it was truly the next option for me at the time. I would never do it by default, and I would never see coming to the end of my payments as a prompt that it's time to go buy a new car and get a new payment.
This kind of thinking is so pervasive that a financial advisor I know brags endlessly about paying off his car and continuing to drive it and he says "this Subaru LITERALLY makes me money every month because I don't have a car payment."
Yes, he's an idiot, but his framing really resonates with his clients. They see a car payment as so normal, so necessary, that having a car, but not having a payment legit feels like making money every month.
Not sure what any of that has to do with soft drinks and mangos though...but hopefully my point is clearer now.