Advice on 2015 vehicles

[TheOldestYoungMan]

Well I've thoroughly reviewed last year's spending and manipulated and squeezed every last dollar out of everything I can manage, and the only thing left I can cut is my vehicle expense.

It's the last bastion of my former self.  But I am very likely to have to work an other 4 years if I keep it, versus 3 years if I ditch it.

The thing is I don't know anything about buying used.  From MMM's posts I can see that I should be looking at something for around $8k or less, in a manual hatchback type thing.  That works out because selling my current vehicle should leave me with around $8k to spend.

So I was hoping you all would have some recommendations for makes/models, what's out there now.

I live south of Houston so there's rain but no snow.  I drive all over Houston/Galveston for work, but don't always drive long distances every day.  I expect to put around 10,000 miles/yr on the vehicle for the next 30 months, maybe 2,000/yr after that.

Also any advice on selling a vehicle yourself, I've always just done a dealer trade in.  A coworker mentioned using a dealer as an intermediary when selling to avoid sales tax, is that a thing?

Thanks

[JLee]

I generally sell to private parties via Craigslist/message forums. I sold a vehicle to dealer once, though - they wanted it bad enough they just cut me a check and gave me a ride home, lol.

How many people do you need to seat? Storage space, etc?

[neo von retorch]

Assuming Texas credits you for the trade-in when it comes time to pay sales tax...

If you buy an $8k car and trade-in an $8k+ car, you save $500 in taxes. (6.25% on $8000)
You would probably get more than $500 more by selling your car privately (on an $8k trade-in you could probably get $10k privately!)

A quick search for manual hatchbacks $5k-8k near 77210 on cars.com shows a few Honda Fits, Scion xAs, a Pontiac Vibe... of those only the Scion has relatively low mileage ($7k for 85k miles). Still, with your low mileage needs, you might have luck finding a good Honda Fit close to 100k for around that price. The Pontiac Vibe is a Toyota in disguise, so don't discount it!