Quote:
Originally Posted by redpoint5
I've estimated a personal sweet-spot around 5 years old, and a person heavily involved with the industry has estimated it at 3 (lease turn in time).
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That's what my thinking was when I got the Avalon: a 3 to 5 year old vehicle with less than 50,000 miles on it.
Maybe other vehicles are different, but with current used car prices, a used Avalon hybrid that's 3 to 5 years old is almost as much as a brand new one. I'll have to look at other cars to see, but if 3 to 5 years is the same price as a new one, might as well as wait it out to find a new one, or until used car prices come back down, hopefully.
I've always thought that 5 years and new is good, or something under $1,000. If it's under $1,000 you know it's most likely going to have problems. But what's a killer is when you get that 10-year-old car for $5,000 to $10,000, somewhere in there, and it ends up with a costly problem.
Car payments are also time. If a person works 10 hours a day then every 10% of their income is an hour of work. If you spend 20% of your income on your vehicle then you're working 2 hours a day (more or less) so that you can own and drive a car.