The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Ask a Mustachian => Topic started by: TheOldestYoungMan on February 06, 2015, 03:08:42 PM
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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
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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?
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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!