Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire No car payments....new whip.

Leasing is often a bad idea, sometimes it makes sense. My wife leases her large SUV but we deduct virtually all of the cost of the lease in connection with her home based business. Plus, we used the money we had saved up for what we originally planned as an SUV purchase (plus trade in for her old car) to help pay our mortgage off this month. The free service (oil changes, washes, etc.) help soften the blow a bit. Not sure we'll do it again when her lease is up but it made sense for us at the time.

Yeah, I didn't mention the business write off which sweatens a lease deal.

Otherwise, I agree. Buy one, maybe a good used one, and drive it as long as it'll drive...

DF

I can agree with you there....never said it was a sin. If I could afford the payments and drive it long enough where depreciation and maintenance etc. were manageable to me, I'd have no problem doing that.

For those of you who don't know, this is a pretty cool site about everything car/truck/motorcycle etc:

Jalopnik

Cheers,

R

I've never needed a fancy car or truck, I've always seen them as tools that get me to and from places that I need to be. They need to be reliable, comfortable and economical that is about it.

Yep. I drive an old 73 Ford.

Ed, I hate to see you driving that old jalopy. I'll trade you my 2013 sedan (work car) for it straight across.

Leasing a car is a great idea

That way I can buy the returned car with low miles at a deep discount

When my mother quit driving 10 years ago, I bought her Pontiac Montana. A minivan isn't stylish but it's very handy and it runs great. It has about 160k on it now. I was able to pay cash for a 4 year old Dodge 2500 diesel about 4 years ago. It had 60k on it but that's nothing for a diesel. It just turned over 100k and unless I screw it up, it should be good for many years yet.
I haven't made a car payment in close to 20 years.

Technically, 0% interest wouldn't be usury by even the narrowest of definitions. When you're right, you're right.

Sweet old Truck RVB.

Nothing wrong with buying new and making payments if you're smart about it. I could have paid cash for the last 3 vehicles I bought, but it would have cost me more money from lost interest income than I paid the bank in interest over the life of the loan. I have investments paying 7-8% interest and got car loans under 2%. I'd be a fool to pull that money out to pay for a car.

Two out of the last 3 purchases resulted in LOWER insurance rates even though the vehicles were either new or newer. Also, 2 of the last 3 vehicles I purchased saved enough in fuel costs to pay for 1/2 the cost of the vehicle in less than 200,000 miles.

An old truck that gets 15-17mpg will burn $25,000-$30,000 in fuel to drive 200,000 miles at todays prices.

I buy a new 4Runner every 95k miles. No breakdowns, no problems, life is good.


mike r

I've got a 2001 E430 as my commuter, great car but God help you if you need repairs.

If I could find a reasonably priced used 3/4 ton diesel I'd gladly get a used one, but anything under $10,000 has issues and a clean 10 y/o truck with over 100,000 miles is pushing $20k.

I actually prefer hopping into my '99 F150 that resides in Idaho over my 2014 Tundra here. It has just over 100k and has been issue free.

Stole it!


A 3-4 year old diesel in nice shape with similar miles would be close to 10x what you paid.


And the turbo could go out tomorrow and I bet it would be over $3400 to replace.....


And the tires on your pickup look good, hell that's a grand right there.




We just paid off my wife's Explorer(18k miles, plan on keeping it for awhile...).
Only payment we have left is our mortgage. Couple years that's gone and we can try to buy something else(real estate).

Payments on things that depreciate suck. Payments on other things pay off.

I have not had a car payment since I was 19. I have driven a lot of junk! I never paid more than $3800 for a car until age 45 when I purchased my Chevy Equinox.

Current fleet:
2001 Yamaha Zuma 50 scooter - lots of fun! Keeps miles off of the daily driver.
2008 Chevy Equinox - Paid $18,500 cash for it in 2010. Daily driver.
1988 Chevy Silverado - For when I need a truck. Gets driven about 3,000 mile per year.