The lady bought a $51k Acura and the dude bought a $80k Ram.
These aren’t exactly “just trying to get by” vehicles. These are financially stupid people not wanting to work within their financial means for a vehicle. They wanted a too expensive for them “looks good so people don’t think I’m poor” vehicle and now are getting bit in the ass by it.
The article is making it out to be they are just trying to get by in life. Uh no.
In 2020 I bought a brand new bike, spent $1400 on it and had it for 23 years until it was stolen. At the time, when I bought it, I was making 26K a year. I paid cash; that was what was within my means to own something without having to pay extra for it through a loan. In 2023 I bought a new (electric) bike, paid $1000 cash, no loan. I make 55K now. That’s what was within my means to own something outright, without having to pay a middle man for the privilege of borrowing money. No car loan hanging over my head, no worries about gas prices, or paying insurance and registration for the privilege to drive. You are 100% right about people living above their means. If the weather is really bad, I take public transit. The most I spend on transit is $65 a month during 1 month in the winter. Other months is usually $13-26 when I am mostly riding the bike everywhere. Me being a cheap bastard about transit affords me the ability to live 3 miles from my job, (higher rent,) and affords me the opportunity to travel and take a small vacation on yearly basis. I can afford to pay my bills with cash because I make a point not to live above my means.
In fairness 51k ain’t even luxury prices anymore. Low end cars start at 30k now.
It was $51k for a used car.
If it was new I could understand, but that much for a used car is crazy. I’m guessing she had to buy when used car prices were almost the same as new, but I feel like that’s still a lot.
I got my car when used car prices were up because I had no choice, so yeah there’s no excuse for that shit.
I’m not sure how it goes with tariffs, conversation rates and whatnot but in last I checked the low end cars in Europe started from way under 20k, Kia picanto for example is 18k
And that’s brand spanking new cars, that are always a bad deal. Few years older and you can drop half the price for basically still a new car
The US is almost devoid of subcompacts. Because when gas prices go down stupid people decide they don’t need them and buy bigger vehicles. And most companies have stopped making them or importing them.
I’m one of the rare few people on the road with a Mitsubishi Mirage. I’d get a kei car if I could though.
And they burn $3-5K less gas, and cost less to insure. This is the 5 year math everyone should do but nah, people buy cars on childish impulses.
Not justifying these people but there are legitimate reasons some people can’t buy the cheapest possible car, like family size and capacity needs.
I own a subcompact because we’re a family of 3 with a small to mid sized dog. We live in a very urban area so the smaller car is definitely a boon in most cases.
We also have access to decent to very good public transport and a relatively bike friendly area.
Yeah it’s completely fair to buy a wagon or a minivan with a bigger family or other needs, I have a 13k Kia Ceed SW because of family and hobbies.
But light truck SUVs are not “family cars”, they’re thrice the size with similar or smaller cargo capacity
What’s crazy is that a mini van is so nice but so many people will go “eww” and demand a ln SUV.
So even if you need a big vehicle, a minivan is expensive, but not so much as the three row SUVs people will demand (and the SUV will get worse mileage).
I will grant that if you need to tow a lot, then an SUV becomes the viable option for decent size and towing capacity, but most folks don’t do that.
Bullshit. I raised three kids in a small car. No one needs a V8 pickup or SUV for an 8lb baby.
It’s just an excuse to consume.
It’s almost like that’s not what I said.
We bought a new 2025 Corolla for $24k.
Impressive, was it toward the end of the month?
I don’t think so. That’s just the normal price for a basic new Corolla.
So it is, maybe my memory is when things were at their worst, if I inflated it even more.
Yeah….the customers are the problem…not the tariffs, not the auto industries, not the financial industries, not the marketing practices of these companies.
Even people who’ve been doing relatively well have had their costs jacked up even more as we move from income taxes to tariffs. Wages in the bottom have remained stagnant. First time home ownership’s average age is 40. They’ve/We’ve all drank the materialist capitalist kool-aid and it’s hard to take back what control we do have.
I bought a rebuild Subaru for $15k and have gotten almost 150k miles out of it in the past 5 years.
There’s no way I would buy a new vehicle unless I was significantly stable in my finances and made way more money.
I don’t understand why people who can barely afford them buy new vehicles when there are much cheaper used options.
That truck cost more than my bachelor’s degree and car combined… And Acura is just luxury Honda. Japanese automakers like to have luxury brands separate from the main one. Buying an Acura (Honda), Lexus (Toyota), or Infiniti (Nissan) should be assumed out of the question unless you can afford a BMW, Cadillac, or any other classic luxury car. And honestly pickups that you don’t need for work should be seen the same way, but moreso. And yeah even if it is for work like here it should be analyzed as a business expense not a nice car that’ll definitely actually make you money, no, you run the money like any other capital investment for heavy machinery, with a bit of extra leeway as it’s also your company car.
Less that Japanese like to have luxury brands, more that the market here seems to demand it.
Cadillac is fancy Chevy. Audi is fancy VW, Genesis is fancy Hyundai, etc.
At least at one point I think Lexus wasn’t a thing in Japan, they just were Toyota models.
Pickup trucks seem to buck the trend, your fancy ass 100k truck needs to still be a “good ol F150”.
The gas bill on that RAM is at least $400/mo.
Poor people don’t know how to be poor. They think they can afford whatever banks will loan them.
Seriously. Last September we had to replace our old 2007 Corolla that got totaled after someone drove out in front of us. We were the only owners of the 2007 Corolla. We owned it from new to dust. We shipped around a bunch, considering various new and used options. We eneded up buying…a brand new 2025 Corolla.
The cost of this vehicle? About $24k. We ran the numbers on it, and that’s actually less, adjusted for inflation, than we paid for the 2007 one.
Affordable cars still exist. You just have to be content with owning less car.
Ravi Stephens II paid $80,000 in 2022 for a Ram 2500 pickup, which he planned to use in a business he was starting.
The $1,019-a-month, seven-year loan he took out was more than double his previous car loan for a 2013 Camero. It didn’t cause him too much trouble at first.
Melissa Dickerson never imagined she would end up with a $1,100 monthly car payment, especially for a used car. Then her son wrecked her Acura.
This isn’t a article about 1K+ car loans, it’s about American Idiots and American males with SDE.
They only have one god damn line that actually addresses the issue:
, as well as the cutting of production on cheaper models.
And if the article isn’t bad enough, it’s locked behind a “agree” button unless you use a vpn and if it’s this bad now, can’t wait to see how CNN will be after MAGA gets a hold of it.
A record share of Americans — more than 20% — agreed to pay more than $1,000 per month for a new car loan at the end of the year, according to car sales site Edmunds.
fuk… that’s absurd. I felt bad agreeing to 300/month. I’d laugh at the dealer, call em drunk and never return if they tried that shit
Yeah, my car payment is $250 and I hate paying that much.
Just bought a Subaru and payment is 271. That less then my truck payment was back 8 years ago when I paid it off. I told them to get fucked when they tried to make it 394.
I feel sorry for people that have car payments. If you can’t pay cash, you can’t afford it.
How long would it take to save up at least 5k for a cheap used car making minimum wage and paying for living expenses? It’s impossible for many Americans without going into debt.
The system is absolutely broken. But sure go and blame the individual for not pulling themselves up by their bootstraps
Do they mean 20% of all Americans, car purchasers, or new car purchasers?
It looks like they mean of new car purchasers, which ignores people who didn’t buy a car or bought used.
That’s outrageous!!
I wonder how those specific buyers’ household incomes are. Part of the “k shaped recovery” from COVID is that some people genuinely are richer than ever.
If 10% of US households make more than $250k/year, and richer households are more likely to buy new cars (and buy them more frequently), it might very well be that the $1000/month payments are being paid by those who can easily afford them, while the $300/month payments are the ones actually causing financial strain on average households.
The same people are living paycheck to paycheck.
If you’re not paying cash for your car, you can’t afford it.
Exactly. People need to grow up and get away of the Boomer mentality of society judging them on how much car they rent.
There are those that pay interest and those that get paid interest, the decision is yours.
0 percent interest auto loans are a thing
You seriously believe a car dealer is losing money?
A car loan is principal and interest. You got a 0% “deal”, you overpaid on the principal.
they’re definitely making less margin and there are plenty of loss lead situations or outside pressures in the short term
you can see what the car was selling for prior months so I’m not sure how much you think it could be increased without it being obvious? (steam sales come to mind)
better argument would be how much they think they’d lose not selling current inventory and what you could potentially haggle the price down to vs you don’t for this deal but that’s insider info I would not have
and I did haggle that some as well anyway
beyond that, if i was that price sensitive, i would not be buying new
but i’ve seen so many people chase a better deal into future problems
Every once in a while there are multiple parties structuring a deal where someone is left with a bad deal when it’s all said and done. As a consumer, you just have to make sure it’s not you.
But take, for example, the early days of Moviepass. You pay a cheap subscription to a service, and they buy you unlimited mobile tickets at the theater. Too good to be true in the long term, but in the short term it was a good way to spend some money that venture capitalists were giving away basically for free.
Businesses aren’t always smart. Sometimes they make financial mistakes and it’s your duty as a responsible consumer to punish those businesses for those mistakes.
In the case of dealer/manufacturer/financing incentives and the individual salesman commission, sometimes the kickback/fee scheme leaves someone else holding the bag. If you can negotiate a lower sticker price because it comes with some predatory terms on financing, but there’s no penalty for prepayment, it might make the most sense to take the low sticker price (made possible by the lender paying the dealer a kickback for the loans), finance at high rates, and then pay the whole thing off as soon as you can, so that you get the “discount” without having to pay high interest/fees, then you walk away with a good deal in exchange for just a little bit more hassle and paperwork. Sometimes the incentives swing the other way, too, where the lender is affiliated with the manufacturer and needs to juice sales volume by offering below-market rates on financing. As long as you can actually see how everything works and you can find the pain point, it may be possible to get a good deal and dump the bad deal on some faceless corporation for them to worry about.
it can be as simple as selling at cost / relatively small loss keeping you in an ecosystem for future knock on profits
not as common in cars but plenty of examples in retail
Yeah, now don’t get me wrong, you can get some deals on cars when dealers see the lot space as increasingly valuable compared to the car on it, but they’re salespeople, they’ll swear up and down that that’s the case no matter what the situation is.
You want to know how you can tell you got a good deal? You compare it to what similar vehicles are being sold for at other places, you have an independent mechanic check it out (an honest dealer will be perfectly happy with you doing that), and you ask a trusted financial institution (ideally a credit union) what they would loan you for it. In general you trust that everything a
carsalesperson is doing that sounds good is to keep your eyes on the hand that isn’t in your pocket.if you’re having to get another mechanic to look at it, i’d probably not come back
already said fuck you to honda ever again for this kinda behavior
When buying used you shouldn’t trust any dealer at their word. When buying new yeah you should be able to trust the oem. Unless you buy American, then caveat emptor, don’t know why you thought Ford suddenly started using quality control.
yea truth, i am not trusting of american car quality
There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
who said the car was free?
you’re just not paying interest
I don’t see any comments about a free car, not sure to what you’re referencing.
The “no free lunch” is a economics principle, no one is giving away anything for free, even as small as a free lunch. Regarding 0% auto loans… these are just another marketing scheme designed to sell more cars because some subset of consumers reported they didn’t want to pay loan interest. Marketing hears that, says great, we’ll design a system where you won’t pay any interest. If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is… except when a billion dollar corporation is the one offering the *great deal, then you can rest assured it’s absolutely too good to be true. Although you’re not paying interest, the total loan amount will be comparable to someone with a similar credit score who is paying the interest rate you would have received had you gone that route.
If you’re making monthly payments, you’re paying more than you would of had you purchased the vehicle outright. This difference is money that could have earned interest in a bank or a return on another financial investment.
Edit: If you can’t afford to buy the vehicle outright, you probably shouldn’t be buying it.
i imagine you being this obtuse is a byproduct of being so far up your own ass
as to why take a no interest loan when i can buy outright, look up time value money
the research i did for both the current model and few years back showed i paid below market average
but yea i am sure you know better with zero specific details
hell credit arbitrage alone would be like 15k and that’s really conservative
… yikes.
lol
No they aren’t, maybe technically but no one is lending money for free, aside from Klarna whose business model is preying on those that can’t pay back
During covid my coworker for a 0% interest loan on a 2016 4runner TRD pro. It was for 80k.
Dudes chilling, taking his time to pay it off, saving for a house.
They exist, I just don’t know how he pulled it off.
Every dollar of interest subsidies manufacturers give is a dollar they cut from discounts and other incentives.
where is this world of perfect information you have about car prices?
far as i know i paid under regional prices on the average before even the no interest
but if you have a source i’ll take it
It’s called critical thinking and common sense. Don’t be a sea lion.
yea i’ma gonna take my actual research over some vague logic and feels even if i agree in principle, vaguely hand waving about bad deals while eating interest for the same otherwise price is lol
And the price will always go up until there is an alternative to curb demand. There won’t be an alternative until people in this country start to demand regional rail in their states, stop acting like public transit is something that can only exist in a major city, and actually invest in the public transit in their cities. “BuT I LiKe DrIviNg!” then drive to your girl’s house or the grocery store. But you should have the OPTION to use the bus or light rail or whatever to get to work/school.
edit: I also want to add that this is a disability/accessibility issue as well. We should consider it unreasonable that the elderly/disabled are required to drive or have modified vehicles just to get around their community. If you support taking away a senior’s driver’s license then you should also support walkable neighborhoods and public transit.
But why? Isnt the sub-25k car still a thing?
Just searching online “cheapest cars USA”, there’s still several options for under 25k
Funnily enough most of them are SUVs and rest sedans, is there even small cars on USA markets? 😂
Marketing and vehicle regulations have made it more profitable for car manufacturers in North America to sell trucks and large SUVs as “family cars”, so over the last 30+ years the industry has been pushing them hard. Trucks and SUVs are classified as light trucks, which have different fuel economy requirements which are more laxed than those for passenger cars. Small cars are being marketed out.
So of course it boils down to corporate greed chasing more money as well as garbage regulations. That’s why the Ford f150 is almost always the best selling vehicle in the US.
Not Just Bikes has a few videos on the topic.
No small cars, no small asses.
No, it’s actually hard to find subcompacts these days. Which sucks as someone who prefers them for reasons beyond price. I like having a tiny, super maneuverable vehicle. I can u turn easily, parallel park without problems, and even see children and wheelchair users crossing the street in front of me
Not new.
