New Mustachian here, just finished reading every single post and starting to apply Mustachianism to my life. (Just last week I paid off the last of over $300,000 in student loans! Yay!)
I have a car question...
Selling my Clown Car to get a Mustache Mobile would actually cost me a few thousand up front, but I suspect that I'll save money in the long run, between the cost of gas and the cost of repairs. Am I making the right decision?
I have a 2007 BMW X3 (SUV), purchased with cash 4 years ago. It has about 137,000 miles on it now. It has been a business vehicle, but starting next month I will no longer need it for my business, so it needs to either be converted to a personal vehicle or be sold. There go all the tax write-offs. I'm leaning toward selling it in favor of a Mustache Mobile.
It appears that I can probably get somewhere between $6000-9000 for it, and I have my eye on either a Honda Fit or a Mazda3 hatchback (2008-2010 or so), either of which would cost around $11-13K. I would pay the difference in cash. The cost of gas for the hatchback would end up being about 2/3 the cost of gas for the clown car, but I only drive about 5000 miles/year. Insurance would be only slightly less.
Over the 4 years I've had the BMW, I've had to put several thousand dollars into repairs. (Yes, I had it checked when I bought it, and it was fine then, so I can't blame Carmax for selling me a lemon. No wrecks. Just bad luck, I suppose.) It's been fine for the past 1-2 years. I don't know if that's an indicator that it's going to be fine for a long time, or if this is just the calm before the storm. It's getting up there in years and miles, and BMWs are expensive to fix.
Mustachians, what do you think? Drive it into the ground and take the risk that there might be expensive repairs, or get rid of it while I can?