Still, the culture surrounding spending so much of your money on a depreciating asset just to have fun or maintain appearances is crazy.
Americans are spending $1000/month for 6+ years to drive a car that mostly sits in driveways, parking lots, and traffic.
That's why I keep advising people to buy used, and to be able to pay for any expensive toy fully in cash. It saves so much depreciation money, and causes you to not go into debt over an expensive toy.
Most of enjoyment in life is spent around depreciating items that you’ll get no return on: food, entertainment, travel. If you don’t spend your money on enjoyment and focus only on return, what have you done with your life?
Made trillions.
Kidding aside, if the item wasn’t such a significant chunk of one’s earnings and also wasn’t on the never ending purchase cycle perpetuated by advertising and culture I’d feel differently.
Buy a nice car that fits your budget and provides satisfaction. Keep it for long enough that it doesn’t impact your family’s financial stability.
You also are under the assumption that the people who constantly buy new cars can’t afford it. For me, it brings enjoyment (something that is not tangible). I also can afford to buy a new car every few years. I view it as something I take pleasure in similar to eating or traveling.
The other perk about me doing that, is since I eat the depreciation, when I turn it in, someone can buy it for cheaper and drive it until the wheels fall off if they want.
And yet people get so bent out of shape when I point out that most cars are nothing more than expensive toys for adults.
Agreed, nothing inherently wrong with expensive toys for adults. For instance, I have a sailboat. I just don't insist that everybody structure their lives and build their world around it.
Not inherently, but the way people drive? Some people definitely treat driving like a literal toy or a video game, and have no respect for how easily you can kill someone. I can't help but feel like this is a result of american car culture (speaking from an obv american perspective , since the world obv revolves around us /s)
But they don't race them on a track like someone who actually loves speed. They use them as status symbols to flex on the poors.
