You already drive a 2008? And it only has 86,000 miles on it? Great news, by the time you'll be ready for a 2016 Civic, they'll be 8-10 years old! Shouldn't be too expensive at that point at all. And a Honda should last you a long time (statistically longer life expectancy than the Ford). You'll probably be able to only worry about replacing that 2016 Civic around 2034-2036 after driving it for ten years.
I'm probably going to be replacing my '99 (~177k miles) soon due to slow-but-hilariously-exponential-decline-of-everything-except-the-radio, and it'll likely be with a '05~'08 car with around 80~120k miles on it if I get lucky. You're already on the other side of my "upgrade." Luckily our other car ('92 with 193k miles) should survive another year or two.
Good point about insurance. I only pay $65/month now and that's a lot cheaper than my girlfriend's Rav 4.
I don't know where you are geographically (has a lot to do with insurance costs), but I pay very slightly more than that ($72/mo I believe) for two cars and two drivers, and we're only 24 and 23. Your cost of insurance might already be relatively low, but that would blow up substantially with a new car (and you go the finance route, you'll have to get full coverage, which adds on a lot. I have a 27 year old friend paying over $100/mo for full coverage on a 2011 Kia!).
dude you dont need a 2016 car. and if you havent noticed you cant afford it since you're taking out a 5 year loan on it.
I could go on about this, but I think this is a huge fallacy on this forum. The hyper debt-aversion ignores common sense math (even if I had the money to pay it in cash, it's mathematically better to finance it).
But you don't have the money to pay in cash. That means it would represent a financial risk and opportunity cost. The risk means you don't have the net worth to support the car possibly blowing up into a million pieces, which means you need to buy additional insurance to cover that, which makes it more expensive.
Even if you could pay in cash, from the sounds of things, your net worth (liquid net worth at a minimum) is pretty low, so tying up that much of your cash in a depreciating asset that doesn't make a
significant upgrade to your life (you already have a car!) doesn't sound like a very good deal at all.
Yes, some people around here I'd argue are debt-adverse to a fault. Debt can be a great tool to help you get ahead in life. You financed a degree of some sort. Likely that will prove long-term to have been worth it: very positive return on investment if done right. Sometimes going into debt makes sense to start a business; the potential upside can be very high if you know what you're doing. Real estate investors use debt all the time. Financing a house to live in can also be productive.
But all of those things can go very south if you leverage the wrong opportunity with debt. Your degree might not get you where you think it will pay-wise, your business might tank a year in, your real estate investments might go bad and lose six-figures overnight, your house might turn out to be on a sinkhole infested with mutant fruit-worshiping baboons. The potential upside has to be valuable enough (and likely enough) to be worth that risk!
Using "debt isn't always bad" (which I do agree with) to justify financing a new car without
a damn good reason is fallacious. A car rental company or a taxi company probably buys new cars with debt every day. But that's a calculated investment that uses leverage intelligently to accelerate business growth and wealth creation. You're not doing that.
Just go ahead and get it over with. Change your name to ReadySetComsumerSucka and join the rest of the new car buying crowd.
Figured it wouldn't take long for a personal attack that didn't answer the question. Heaven forbid I've driven older cars my whole life and--GASP--I'm looking at a car that will cost $14,000 after trade-in.
I'm 28 and have had only two cars in my life: a 2001 Nissan Maxima (which I drove from about 2004 to 2007) and a 2008 Ford Focus (2007 to present).
This does not compute. You've driven a three year old car until it was six years old, and a brand new car until it's eight years old (so far). Where are the "older cars" in this story?
OP, I really hope you don't think we're ganging up on you and attacking you. We're trying to help you. Cars are an area where it's really easy to talk yourself in making irrational decisions that end up costing you thousands. And every car decision cascades through more decisions the rest of your life, for better or worse. Foolishly buying more car than you need is far more boat-anchor-on-finances life-damaging than say, buying a new $2 bottle of ketchup every day instead of refrigerating the first one after opening. But you'd probably call that being fiscally irresponsible.