A Cybertruck owner shares his frustration following multiple failed attempts to sell his truck. After losing more than $20,000 in 2,800 miles, the owner says, “I want to cut my losses and move on, but I can't give this thing away.”
That’s a good point on the financing side: a used car with about a year or two is well worth it if you have the funds to pay it outright without financing, but if you have to arrange financing yourself you’re not going to get as good rates as what the car makers can achieve thank to their bulk deals with Financial Institutions for the financing, which together with other factors (such as, as you pointed out, some cars not falling as much in price from new to used) might wipe out most of the benefit, at which point the difference might just be small enough that it’s worth the “peace of mind” value one gets from buying new.
My point is that just going direct for a new car without at least doing some legwork and seriously investigating second hand options is a bad move, since the cost of a car in terms of “how long do I have to work to pay for it” is pretty high for most people and thus its well worth it to spend many hours of one’s time doing some researching and evaluating before buying rather than going to the option that’s the most heavily pushed in advertising, because for such an expensive purchase even 10% price savings will quite likely well exceed the value of those hours (and the easiest thing to figure out upfront and with little time investment nowadays is if the used car market for the vehicles one is interested in is expensive and close to brand new prices or not, so one can quickly ditch “second hand” as an option if it turns out the market is pricing it too high).
Personally I haven’t bough a new car in more than a decade (I ditched my middle-age-crisis-mobile some years ago and switched to cycling and walking, but then again I’ve been living in urban areas in Europe so a car is not required and generally more of a hassle and money sink than anything else), but a year ago my dad got a great deal on a small second hand city car which was less than two years old (so it even had some manufacturer warranty time in it) which saved him a pretty penny, though that was in Portugal rather than the US.
That’s a good point on the financing side: a used car with about a year or two is well worth it if you have the funds to pay it outright without financing, but if you have to arrange financing yourself you’re not going to get as good rates as what the car makers can achieve thank to their bulk deals with Financial Institutions for the financing, which together with other factors (such as, as you pointed out, some cars not falling as much in price from new to used) might wipe out most of the benefit, at which point the difference might just be small enough that it’s worth the “peace of mind” value one gets from buying new.
My point is that just going direct for a new car without at least doing some legwork and seriously investigating second hand options is a bad move, since the cost of a car in terms of “how long do I have to work to pay for it” is pretty high for most people and thus its well worth it to spend many hours of one’s time doing some researching and evaluating before buying rather than going to the option that’s the most heavily pushed in advertising, because for such an expensive purchase even 10% price savings will quite likely well exceed the value of those hours (and the easiest thing to figure out upfront and with little time investment nowadays is if the used car market for the vehicles one is interested in is expensive and close to brand new prices or not, so one can quickly ditch “second hand” as an option if it turns out the market is pricing it too high).
Personally I haven’t bough a new car in more than a decade (I ditched my middle-age-crisis-mobile some years ago and switched to cycling and walking, but then again I’ve been living in urban areas in Europe so a car is not required and generally more of a hassle and money sink than anything else), but a year ago my dad got a great deal on a small second hand city car which was less than two years old (so it even had some manufacturer warranty time in it) which saved him a pretty penny, though that was in Portugal rather than the US.
100% agreed there.