You must log in or register to comment.
Couldn’t buy a house, so now we have to rent. Now that we can’t afford rent, might as well live out of a car. Now cars are too expensive, might as well live out of a cardboard box.
Owner Class: “Hey - it should trickle down any minute. I know you’ve been waiting 50 years for it, but it’s gonna come this time. Meanwhile, please subscribe to our Cardboard-Box-as-a-Service.”
EDIT: Oops, I just got back from my beating. My owners wanted me to add an additional addendum:
“Cardboard-Box-as-a-Service (CBaaS) has some additional benefits. Our free tier allows you access to the box, along with special promotions from our sponsors that will play inside the box. Parking comes as an extra service in order to comply with the law. We will provide details on what surcharges you can expect, but our partner providers can communicate what rental fees for land for the CBaaS entail.”
“Our Premium Tier will remove ads. And finally our Super Premium Tier includes a bidet. Water service for the bidet is included with up to 10 bidet cycles per user, with additional licensing available for additional fees. Water pressure may be throttled when many concurrent users are using their bidet. We will release new details on additional plans to increase your booty stream priority, once we figure out how much we can get away with.”
I am tempted to save this comment just to see how accurate it is in ten years.
Can I cry yet?
I am seeing way too many ads for diy shipping container homes. Yep, Amazon is going to corner the market when they age out their containers.
Pathetic.
“Yea, but the rents are outrageous” - Bender, Futurama
Bezos just saw this post and cardboard box prices just tripled. Thanks a lot.
I’m impressed you sprung for the corrugated
Gotta buy the premium materials while supplies last
Have you seen how much cardboard boxes cost now?
Source: just got notice of lease termination, been looking into moving logistics
When the cost of cardboard is out of reach, what do?
Let us take to the sewers, brothers. One day we shall return to the surface and bring the Vermintide
I blame trucks.
Right. Cars aren’t really on the market. These cramped, low visibility, shit-mileage behemoths are the reigning force on the market now.
– and right up my chuff.
That’s because Americans are fucking idiots that WANT these behemoths…
15 years ago, I’m worried about spending 25k on a car, my friend went out and bought a huge Chevy pickup that was over 40k…
Here’s the twist, he made a quarter of what did…
Less than two years later it was repo’d.
deleted by creator
Stop buying suvs and trucks. Buy compacts and small sedans. As those markets erode it just makes everything worse.
Cars have always been relatively expensive to own and operate and the American way, unfortunately, has been to take out lines of credit in order to purchase vehicles they could just barely afford.
It’s insane to think about but the average car payment for a new vehicle in 2023 was $726 and the average loan term is nearly 70 months!
Brand new cars in 1973 were like $2500 ($17000 in today’s dollar). No one wants to sell compacts in the US anymore because people love their giant SUVs.
By the time you pay off your car, it’ll be a piece of junk. How does leasing the car compare?
Leasing is like setting money on fire and using money to put the fire out. The only scenario it ever makes sense is vs buying and selling a car every 2-3 years.
Modern cars are extremely reliable, there isn’t a good reason to need a new one in less than a decade unless it’s involved in an accident.
That was my only hesitation for buying an EV: they’re too new and changing too quickly to have much track record on how well they last. I did go ahead though, so we’ll see in 10-15 years.
Historically my practice is to buy a reliable car new and keep until major repairs, usually 10-15 years. It helps if you are able to set aside sufficient money to avoid a loan
Leasing is usually a worse choice financially. However it can make sense in a few scenarios such as having to always have a new car and business expensing. Now might be one of the few times it’s worth leasing, in the US for some EVs where a lease can take advantage of the full tax incentive but a purchase can not
I’ve always lived by two rules when it comes to vehicles:
-
Never buy new. Buy approximately two years old used low mileage
-
If I can’t afford the vehicle on a three year note, I can’t afford the vehicle
Additionally, always secure third party financing and have it in your back pocket, but don’t tell the dealership that part until absolutely necessary. They may try to match it, but their fine print has always had catches it in that make it a worse option in my experience.
I’m not sure if these rules will work going forward as prices seem to have doubled in the past three years, and I’m loathe to ponder how purchase is getting replaced by subscribe.
My current car is ten years old with 110k miles on it. I keep it super maintained because I can’t stomach the thought of my next buying experience.
I am exactly the same.
-
Americans can no longer afford
their carsOn the other hand, the world could have its first trillionaire within the decade!
And you know how like 1 billion seconds is 31.7 years…guess how many 1 trillion seconds is in years…
...you ready?
A little under 31,690 years
But unlike Americans living in an unaffordable country, our future trillionaire earned it…right?
I just did the math. Don’t do the math.
For added context: 1 million seconds is “just” 11.6 days.
100,000 seconds is 27.8 hours.
10,000 seconds is 2.8 hours.
It’s self inflicted. Americans don’t buy inexpensive new cars. Now everything new is targeted at upper middle class and financing is expensive + pent up demand from COVID is exacerbating the issue pushing used buyers into the new market.
But you can still buy a Mitsubishi for under 20k and an Impreza for 22k. People don’t.
Certified pre-owned lease returns! I’m on my second and they’ve both been great cars for $22k or under.
That said, a big contributor is the amount financed. When we’ve bought new cars we paid $7k up front for mine and $5k for my wife’s plus our trade ins. Many, if not most, people can’t afford to do that so they have huge monthly payments even before interest.
22k for a used car seems like a bad deal
Depends on how used, make, model, and trim. Not everyone is in a race to a bare bones compact.
You got it. My first was a pretty basic sedan that I upgraded to from my old retired police Crown Vic. My current car was a two year old lease return in the top trim level available and ~15k miles.
Key word in there is certified used.
Certified used means it comes with a warranty. My mother purchased a certified used Crosstrek. It was a returned lease. In fact most certified pre-owned vehicles are returned leases. The manufacturer powertrain warranty still applies and the dealer adds a warranty for everything else. She also had the option to purchase a manufacturer extended warranty because it still qualified, which she did. All for $24k. It’s 2 years old, less than 10k miles. It’s not a bad deal at all when you look at the bigger picture. The new cost of this Crosstrek in the configuration she got it in would have been $31k.
People have been rolling negative equity into new car payments, and claiming to be smart because rates were so low… rates aren’t low anymore and that risk is being realized.
Financing a car is a poverty trap.
If we’d always been accounting for all the actual costs of cars, including externalities, most people would have never been able to afford them, we’d recognize them as the very costly luxeries they actually are, and not have completely dismantled our ability to live without them in every city except NYC, Boston, Chicago, DC, and San Francisco.
You could say that about everything. If you would account for all actual cost no one would fly, eat steaks, own 2 TVs or change phones every 2 years either. We would buy things that last 10-20 years and replace them only when they are broken. As we used to…
Slippery slope aside, I think reducing unnecessary consumerism would be beneficial for our most vuneral populations. There would be a lower barrier of entry into the economy and more resources would be available at a lower cost for people who cannot afford them
Oh, I wasn’t making a slippery slope argument. I meant that this is what should happen. We exported most of the devastating impact on the environment and the terrible working conditions to developing countries so that we can enjoy tons of crap we don’t really need. If things we buy would reflect the actual costs we would have to limit how much we consume. Of course no one would like it.
Well, it’s a mixed bag. There have been absolutely incredible advances in efficiency that do enable a lot of things to genuinely be much cheaper and accessible than they used to be, but some of that is also just the ability to throw external costs on other people (climate change, for instance). This is why things like carbon taxes are so strongly supported by economists.
Steak, for instance, is hugely subsidized by how little farmers have to pay for water, along with other government benefits. Flying has environmental costs, but those are reasonably quantifiable and, per flight and per passenger, not that insane as far as I understand.
I do think consumer electronics are a bit of a different story though. Yes, cheap labor plays a huge role there, but those labor costs aren’t completely divorced from reality; the fact of the matter is that east Asian labor is actually chap. Ocean shipping and modern production plants are insanely efficient, though again climate costs need to be captured.
But east Asian labour is cheap because of bad working conditions, weak workers’ rights and no environmental protections.
Don’t forget poverty wages and lower standards of living.
Cars actually make more sense in low density areas. Farmers need to get around. Urban areas should rely mostly on public transportation.
Of course, but it’s all those in the middle where we need better options. US has just a handful of cities with decent transit, but every large city should be able to. Then there are all the medium cities built around using cars: transit should still be a better option but works better with concentrations of people
It should be reasonable for a majority of the population to have effective transit, even in the US
Up until I got an EV I never thought about dollar per 100 km. On “fuel”, I used to be near $20/100km for my premium powered midsize SUV.
not to mention insurance costs and taxes
used vehicles cost nearly same in most cases and in poor condition
yes let us blame trucks not the $7.50 minimum wage and the inflation and what have yous
biden and electric vehicle are not the jesus of our times
going to take a lot to make travel affordable again and on that note the more traveling costs the less people do it and the less they travel the more stuck in the state they are at they become
way more than prohibitively expensive vehicles here this is a means to keep citizens in place and poor
yes let us blame trucks not the $7.50 minimum wage and the inflation and what have yous
¿Por qué no los dos?
So señor!
Y-….you guys used to be able to afford cars?
According to an October report by Market Watch, Americans needed an annual income of at least $100,000 to afford a car, at least if they’re following standard budgeting advice, which says you shouldn’t spend more than 10 percent of your monthly income on car-related expenses.
This is a dumb way to determine whether someone can “afford” a car.
What’s a better metric?
Comparing the amoritization of paying off a loan to the amount of debt held.
Can you expand?
Monthly payments depend on loan term and interest rates as well as principal. I don’t think that is a good way to determine whether you can afford something.
They didn’t list out every factor of the standard advice. The standard advice also includes 20% down and no longer than a 48 month payback period. So it more or less locks it in, other than rate.
NEW cars. Used market is just fine but people always want that new new.
Absolute losers LOL
Someone is stuck in 2010s. The used car market has been ridiculously hot and not buyer friendly for several years now.
I haven’t looked in 8 years. I am too afraid. Plan to just throw money at my existing car until I die.
Stick with the devil you know, baby. Just got my 1991 van back from the mechanic. Smells like a refinery fire, but it’s fucking reliable.
Haha nice
I know right? I was in a real bind recently. My friend sold me his used car from 2005 for 1500 dollars and i almost sucked his dick
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.
The article also says used car market up 38%. Average costs up by more than the new car’s percentage
