Americans can no longer afford their cars

Lee Duna@lemmy.nz to News@lemmy.world – 377 points –
Americans can no longer afford their cars
newsweek.com
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Have you looked recently? For the past few years buying new was actually cheaper than buying used, and factoring in manufacturer subsidized interest rates, the difference in the current market still makes new a viable option, unless you're looking at 10+ year old cars (which still start north of $10k these days).

Fortunately it's gotten modestly better in the last year, depending on what you're looking for. But yeah, 10 months ago when I was looking there was virtually no advantage to getting 2-3 year old models of the car I was looking for. Ended up getting a new one for the first time in my life (lucky enough to be able to afford it, though I had kept the previous one for 10 years partly saving up)

Yeah I've been keeping an eye open since my car is likely to die soon. Thankfully some of the specific cars I'm looking at have depreciated like rocks. I feel like I'm probably going to end up with one of the first gen Bolts that GM bought back during the recall, because they're (comparatively) super cheap.