Gas prices and buying a new car vs driving the old one
(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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Some people just seem to not make much sense. People complain about forking out 80 a week to run their SUV down the road but then they go out and get a new car and take up payments.
They will say “I can’t even afford to hardly drive to work paying 80 bucks a week in gas!”
Here is where they seem to lose me. They hate paying 320 bucks a month for gas but they are happy to take on payments of a new car? Lets say you got a 20,000 dollar loan set at 5 years with 6.0% interest then that translates into a $386.66 dollar payment each month. That is more than the gas they were paying.
Gas prices have caused even junky older cars that get good fuel mileage to go from selling at 500 bucks to 2000 or more.
If you look at a NEW civic the MSRP is right at 19000 bucks and now they are raising the prices to make more money as demand grows.
Trucks and SUV’s that were selling for 16,000 a few years ago with few miles on them are hardly selling at 4,000 now! Dealers won’t even take them in some cases.
There is the thought that as gas prices go up the car will pay for itself which in some cases it will but it depends on how much you drive and how long you plan on keeping the car.
The prius has been shown to maybe never pay itself off in some cases and in others it was 10 or more years before you break even.
On that loan you take out there is also interest so it will cost you more than 20k to actually pay for the car. So your new car may not be a wise decision after all if you just want to stop paying high gas prices and transfer that to a monthly payment that does not change no matter how little you drive!
By getting a more fuel efficient car you are however sending less to the oil co’s and helping to get us off foreign oil. Plus supply and demand would mean less price for the gas you do pay for if a lot of people did the same.
Just be smart when getting a NEW car. Compare how much you drive vs how much you will save and have to pay for another vehicle. You could possibly save more by getting a cheap truck and driving it when you think of how much gas you could get for 19,000 bucks.
August 13th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
have you ever stopped to wander that most people are starting to care about the environment. Its not all about saving money on gas and in the long run it will indeed be effective.