Until it explodes with so much force that it sends shrapnel into the passenger compartment.
I've had that happen! Clipped a misplaced construction barrel at moderate speed, and the glass from the side view mirror exploded into the car (my window was down). Better to have you mirror cut out on you than to have it cut into you!
It's important to understand the phrase "risk-adjusted return on investment". Investment-grade short term corporate bonds are paying under 2%. Or think about it this way: the finance company is going to float a bond in order to loan you money. Clearly they think there's profit in this arrangement.
Borrowing to invest in something volatile like the stock market is... well, let's just say very few people have had long-term success with that strategy.
Now if you have a mortgage at 4%, and you can get principle-reduction credit by borrowing on your car at 2%, that would make sense, but you've increased the monthly payments you're required to make, which would suck if you lost your job.
Yearly payments? You're borrowing money to buy a car? Don't do that.
The annual depreciation cost of a car is (amount_paid - sale_price)/years_owned. For that cost alone, you're saving 20-25% a year by keeping a new car 10 years instead of 6.
Maintenance gets worse over time (most cars still need one expensive repair during years 6-10, plus low cost repairs accumulate). That won't make up the difference, but it's non-trivial, so you're looking at a savings of ~20%/year by keeping the car longer. But there are a lot of other costs to owning a car (insurance, parking, tolls, normal maintenance, gas), and those costs tend to be similar to the depreciation cost for a daily driver that you put real miles on, so you're really only shaving off ~10% of your "car TCO" by keeping a new car for 10 years.
Buying a new car every 3 years is really costly. Buying one every 6 years is slightly more expensive than keeping it for 10. You're at the point of diminishing returns by 6.
K, stop with the car payments - if you buy outright a $30k vehicle every six years compared to every 12 (if you've picked a decent vehicle and maintained it), you're NOT saving money.
I agree. My point was that the savings is very minor. In my case, where my non-depreciation costs are about the same as my depreciation costs, getting a new car every 6 years adds about 10% to my total cost of owning my car. If it were a "second car" that's hardly ever used, it might be 20% cheaper (or maybe more, as maintenance would be so low), and that's a different story. But for a daily driver you put real miles on, you're just not saving very much.
If you sell your working car for 5000 and buy a new car for 35000 the resale value of your car was NEGATIVE 30000
Sure, that's a different outlook but the math is identical.
If I replace a $30k car after 6 years and get, say, $9k for the trade in (reliable cars have reasonable resale value these days), that's a cost of $3500/year. If I replace the same car after 10 years and get, say, $3k for it, that's a cost of $2700/year. If that were my only cost of ownership, that would be a big deal. But of course it's not.
Most cars will need at least 1 major repair in that 6-10 year window, and normal ongoing maintenance gets more demanding as everything made of rubber ages out. Still probably less than $3000/year with all of that, unless you need 2 major repairs (must be a Chevy or Dodge), but still that's about a 20% difference.
If you look at the TCO, with insurance, gas, parking, tolls, normal maintenance that all cars need, etc, that savings is more like 10% of the TCO. Still coming out ahead, but it's marginal. (I spend $7000/year on all that non-depreciation stuff, BTW, freaking Seattle).
Or you can take the secured loan, invest the $50k, and come out ahead. Moron.
Perhaps that thought also occurred to the finance company that offers the loan. Somehow they see the loan to you offering better risk-adjusted returns than the market. But I'm sure they're wrong, and you're smarter.
because you haven't been making payments for the extra four years.... loan this... loan that
Stop with the car payments already. Terrible way to go through life. Consumer debt is never the answer. There's plenty of years to save up for your next car
buy one when you can get deals and incentives, and more easily walk away from dirty salesperson (which is about 99% of car salespeople).
Or just use a buying service. They're great, if you can find one where you are. Last time I bought a new, low-end car, I used Enterprise Fleet Services - they don't charge anything (or didn't then), and I didn't have to mix with the weasels. There's a variety of such places, and you don't have to hunt for that 1 guy in 100.
The cost of a car is the price you pay for it, less the price you sell it for. TFA is about new cars, thus the topic of this here thread. Of course it's better to start with a used car, but that's another topic.
You have a strategy. I've tried it, and I don't find it optimal. It's not materially cheaper than replacing a car after a reasonable number of years, and you get a less reliable car.
Seriously, if you're borrowing money for a car, you're doing it wrong (unless it's a work vehicle, or your first reliable car after getting your first real job).
If you can only think of the cost of a car in terms of a "car payment", you need to learn how money works. Best thing I ever did.
Resale value varies a lot by car and by condition, but to have some numbers, lets look at a car that is worth 1/3rd it's upfront cost after 6 years, vs 10% after 10 years. The difference in depreciation is then 11% vs 9%, per year. If that were the only cost of car ownership, that would be significant - you could get a 20% better car by keeping it for 10 years instead of 6.
But other costs matter too. Maintenance (which does get worse over time), insurance, gas, parking, tolls, etc. So you're maybe looking at being able to get a 10% more expensive car at replacement time by keeping the car for 10 years rather than 6. That's not even a step up to the next model for most manufacturers.
So, for the same money, do you get better value by getting a $30k car every 6 years, or a $33k car every 10 years? Seems very subjective to me: if you value "newness", the former is a better deal, if you don't the latter, but it's a small enough difference either way.
Which is why most modern cars keep losing resale value between 6 and 10 years. If you keep a car for just a few years, the "off the lot" depreciation is the dominant cost, but as time goes on, insurance, maintenance (which does go up over time), gas, parking, tolls, etc, are the majority of your expenses, and gains in "average depreciation per year" are no longer the primary concern.
It's unfair in general for to blame the game devs for poor quality, as management generally ships games long before they're done, over the objections of the devs. Plus, the original devs are typically writing for a locked-down console, and the PC port is often farmed out to some bottom-dollar shop that cares nothing about code quality (those guys certainly deserve the blame).
Blizzard, though, writes for the PC as a first-class platform, and doesn't ship games before they're done, so they really have no excuse here. Make it easy to catch and ban cheaters, instead of trying to solve a technical flaw with your legal department!
That's far too much. I suspect you've been suckered into buying status instead of transport. You're at least trying to be sane, if you're not borrowing money for that, but 50% is too much.
If you look at lifetime depreciation + lifetime maintenance, you do better the longer you keep a car, but with diminishing returns. After about 6 years, the benefit per extra year is pretty small. For the same cost, getting a slightly nicer car that you keep for 10 years, vs a slightly less nice car that you keep for 6? Works out to about the same "average level of niceness".
Of course, if you put very little wear on your car, keeping it longer can make sense (but then, a car with very little wear has significant resale value after 6 years).
If the 1% weren't hogging all the wealth for themselves
So how would that help? Distributed evenly, all the stock in all the public corps in America comes out to about the same as the average income, so you'd get about 2% more money to spend from the dividends. All the corporate bonds are about the same story.
Now what? If people can sell that off, then the wealth just becomes concentrated again. And what do you do for retirement? Retirement is mostly about the accumulation of wealth over your working life, to sell off again in retirement. Should people save for retirement by giving money to banks? Now that's a silly idea.
That's nuts. Borrowing money to buy a car? You're already doing it wrong (unless it's a work vehicle, or your first reliable car after getting your first real job).
Spending $50k on a car when you need to borrow money to buy it is insane. And travel expenses as a significant part of your budget before retirement? That's a plan for a retirement involving cat food.
The single biggest factor affecting savings at retirement is how often you've replaced your car in your lifetime. Unfortunately, holding on to a new car for more than 6 years stops helping much (annual costs become dominated by other factors). Going cheaper helps a lot.
20% sounds very low to me, though. I've tried to keep it to 25-30%, and that's worked well for me. Spending 40%+ of a year's pay on a car is just a bad life strategy.
This. Socialism leads to high unemployment. You can argue about why, about how everyone is doing socialism wrong, about how this is no true socialism, whatever, but what the EU nations do right now creates high unemployment. And the problem worsens over time.
I believe it is the most advanced. I haven't seen better yet from competitors. A thing can suck and still be the "most advanced". A plan can be a bad plan and the best plan we have.
The company now known as "AT&T" likely had nothing to do with installing these poles. A lot of hard work went into the creation of the original telephone network, and that should be respected. The abuse of customers by Ma Bell overwhelmed that, and they were broken up and lost any right to that legacy. Just because someone re-assembles the monopoly doesn't give them any moral right to that infrastructure - if anything, the reverse.
The "last mile" need to be a set of public utilities nationwide. Cable, phone lines, all of it. Preventing abuse of monopolistic power is a legitimate government power, and that includes natural monopolies.
Having the wall where the sound is coming from be acoustically dead is generally a good idea. First order reflections give the room it's sound, but you don't want resonance. Similarly, you either want carpet or vaulted ceilings, and something to keep both side walls from being a sonic mirror box - a wall hanging, a triptych screen, whatever fits the decor (in my unclassy apartment it's just the vertical blinds
Making that wall look OK is really what they'll be selling, IMO. No one wants to start at acoustical foam, but there are other approaches.
Half the TOS episodes were really bad. Much like SF short stories of the day (and mostly written by the same crowd), it was very hit-or-miss. The good episodes hold up remarkably well after 50 years (wait, 50? fuck I'm old), since they were never technology-focused. But the average show quality isn't good, because again half of em were garbage.
Slashdot Mirror
"I am who I am" - the ultimate authority
"I am that I am" is a better translation of the Tetragrammaton.
Unless you were going for a different authority with "I yam what I yam".
Until it explodes with so much force that it sends shrapnel into the passenger compartment.
I've had that happen! Clipped a misplaced construction barrel at moderate speed, and the glass from the side view mirror exploded into the car (my window was down). Better to have you mirror cut out on you than to have it cut into you!
It's important to understand the phrase "risk-adjusted return on investment". Investment-grade short term corporate bonds are paying under 2%. Or think about it this way: the finance company is going to float a bond in order to loan you money. Clearly they think there's profit in this arrangement.
Borrowing to invest in something volatile like the stock market is ... well, let's just say very few people have had long-term success with that strategy.
Now if you have a mortgage at 4%, and you can get principle-reduction credit by borrowing on your car at 2%, that would make sense, but you've increased the monthly payments you're required to make, which would suck if you lost your job.
Yearly payments? You're borrowing money to buy a car? Don't do that.
The annual depreciation cost of a car is (amount_paid - sale_price)/years_owned. For that cost alone, you're saving 20-25% a year by keeping a new car 10 years instead of 6.
Maintenance gets worse over time (most cars still need one expensive repair during years 6-10, plus low cost repairs accumulate). That won't make up the difference, but it's non-trivial, so you're looking at a savings of ~20%/year by keeping the car longer. But there are a lot of other costs to owning a car (insurance, parking, tolls, normal maintenance, gas), and those costs tend to be similar to the depreciation cost for a daily driver that you put real miles on, so you're really only shaving off ~10% of your "car TCO" by keeping a new car for 10 years.
Buying a new car every 3 years is really costly. Buying one every 6 years is slightly more expensive than keeping it for 10. You're at the point of diminishing returns by 6.
K, stop with the car payments - if you buy outright a $30k vehicle every six years compared to every 12 (if you've picked a decent vehicle and maintained it), you're NOT saving money.
I agree. My point was that the savings is very minor. In my case, where my non-depreciation costs are about the same as my depreciation costs, getting a new car every 6 years adds about 10% to my total cost of owning my car. If it were a "second car" that's hardly ever used, it might be 20% cheaper (or maybe more, as maintenance would be so low), and that's a different story. But for a daily driver you put real miles on, you're just not saving very much.
If you sell your working car for 5000 and buy a new car for 35000 the resale value of your car was NEGATIVE 30000
Sure, that's a different outlook but the math is identical.
If I replace a $30k car after 6 years and get, say, $9k for the trade in (reliable cars have reasonable resale value these days), that's a cost of $3500/year. If I replace the same car after 10 years and get, say, $3k for it, that's a cost of $2700/year. If that were my only cost of ownership, that would be a big deal. But of course it's not.
Most cars will need at least 1 major repair in that 6-10 year window, and normal ongoing maintenance gets more demanding as everything made of rubber ages out. Still probably less than $3000/year with all of that, unless you need 2 major repairs (must be a Chevy or Dodge), but still that's about a 20% difference.
If you look at the TCO, with insurance, gas, parking, tolls, normal maintenance that all cars need, etc, that savings is more like 10% of the TCO. Still coming out ahead, but it's marginal. (I spend $7000/year on all that non-depreciation stuff, BTW, freaking Seattle).
Or you can take the secured loan, invest the $50k, and come out ahead. Moron.
Perhaps that thought also occurred to the finance company that offers the loan. Somehow they see the loan to you offering better risk-adjusted returns than the market. But I'm sure they're wrong, and you're smarter.
because you haven't been making payments for the extra four years. ... loan this ... loan that
Stop with the car payments already. Terrible way to go through life. Consumer debt is never the answer. There's plenty of years to save up for your next car
buy one when you can get deals and incentives, and more easily walk away from dirty salesperson (which is about 99% of car salespeople).
Or just use a buying service. They're great, if you can find one where you are. Last time I bought a new, low-end car, I used Enterprise Fleet Services - they don't charge anything (or didn't then), and I didn't have to mix with the weasels. There's a variety of such places, and you don't have to hunt for that 1 guy in 100.
The cost of a car is the price you pay for it, less the price you sell it for. TFA is about new cars, thus the topic of this here thread. Of course it's better to start with a used car, but that's another topic.
You have a strategy. I've tried it, and I don't find it optimal. It's not materially cheaper than replacing a car after a reasonable number of years, and you get a less reliable car.
What's a car payment?
Seriously, if you're borrowing money for a car, you're doing it wrong (unless it's a work vehicle, or your first reliable car after getting your first real job).
If you can only think of the cost of a car in terms of a "car payment", you need to learn how money works. Best thing I ever did.
Do the math.
Resale value varies a lot by car and by condition, but to have some numbers, lets look at a car that is worth 1/3rd it's upfront cost after 6 years, vs 10% after 10 years. The difference in depreciation is then 11% vs 9%, per year. If that were the only cost of car ownership, that would be significant - you could get a 20% better car by keeping it for 10 years instead of 6.
But other costs matter too. Maintenance (which does get worse over time), insurance, gas, parking, tolls, etc. So you're maybe looking at being able to get a 10% more expensive car at replacement time by keeping the car for 10 years rather than 6. That's not even a step up to the next model for most manufacturers.
So, for the same money, do you get better value by getting a $30k car every 6 years, or a $33k car every 10 years? Seems very subjective to me: if you value "newness", the former is a better deal, if you don't the latter, but it's a small enough difference either way.
Which is why most modern cars keep losing resale value between 6 and 10 years. If you keep a car for just a few years, the "off the lot" depreciation is the dominant cost, but as time goes on, insurance, maintenance (which does go up over time), gas, parking, tolls, etc, are the majority of your expenses, and gains in "average depreciation per year" are no longer the primary concern.
It's unfair in general for to blame the game devs for poor quality, as management generally ships games long before they're done, over the objections of the devs. Plus, the original devs are typically writing for a locked-down console, and the PC port is often farmed out to some bottom-dollar shop that cares nothing about code quality (those guys certainly deserve the blame).
Blizzard, though, writes for the PC as a first-class platform, and doesn't ship games before they're done, so they really have no excuse here. Make it easy to catch and ban cheaters, instead of trying to solve a technical flaw with your legal department!
Further, if you can make the payments on that $50k car, then save that money instead, and soon enough you won't need a loan.
That's far too much. I suspect you've been suckered into buying status instead of transport. You're at least trying to be sane, if you're not borrowing money for that, but 50% is too much.
If you look at lifetime depreciation + lifetime maintenance, you do better the longer you keep a car, but with diminishing returns. After about 6 years, the benefit per extra year is pretty small. For the same cost, getting a slightly nicer car that you keep for 10 years, vs a slightly less nice car that you keep for 6? Works out to about the same "average level of niceness".
Of course, if you put very little wear on your car, keeping it longer can make sense (but then, a car with very little wear has significant resale value after 6 years).
If the 1% weren't hogging all the wealth for themselves
So how would that help? Distributed evenly, all the stock in all the public corps in America comes out to about the same as the average income, so you'd get about 2% more money to spend from the dividends. All the corporate bonds are about the same story.
Now what? If people can sell that off, then the wealth just becomes concentrated again. And what do you do for retirement? Retirement is mostly about the accumulation of wealth over your working life, to sell off again in retirement. Should people save for retirement by giving money to banks? Now that's a silly idea.
That's nuts. Borrowing money to buy a car? You're already doing it wrong (unless it's a work vehicle, or your first reliable car after getting your first real job).
Spending $50k on a car when you need to borrow money to buy it is insane. And travel expenses as a significant part of your budget before retirement? That's a plan for a retirement involving cat food.
The single biggest factor affecting savings at retirement is how often you've replaced your car in your lifetime. Unfortunately, holding on to a new car for more than 6 years stops helping much (annual costs become dominated by other factors). Going cheaper helps a lot.
20% sounds very low to me, though. I've tried to keep it to 25-30%, and that's worked well for me. Spending 40%+ of a year's pay on a car is just a bad life strategy.
This. Socialism leads to high unemployment. You can argue about why, about how everyone is doing socialism wrong, about how this is no true socialism, whatever, but what the EU nations do right now creates high unemployment. And the problem worsens over time.
He certainly ran Checkoff straight into the wall!
I believe it is the most advanced. I haven't seen better yet from competitors. A thing can suck and still be the "most advanced". A plan can be a bad plan and the best plan we have.
The company now known as "AT&T" likely had nothing to do with installing these poles. A lot of hard work went into the creation of the original telephone network, and that should be respected. The abuse of customers by Ma Bell overwhelmed that, and they were broken up and lost any right to that legacy. Just because someone re-assembles the monopoly doesn't give them any moral right to that infrastructure - if anything, the reverse.
The "last mile" need to be a set of public utilities nationwide. Cable, phone lines, all of it. Preventing abuse of monopolistic power is a legitimate government power, and that includes natural monopolies.
Having the wall where the sound is coming from be acoustically dead is generally a good idea. First order reflections give the room it's sound, but you don't want resonance. Similarly, you either want carpet or vaulted ceilings, and something to keep both side walls from being a sonic mirror box - a wall hanging, a triptych screen, whatever fits the decor (in my unclassy apartment it's just the vertical blinds
Making that wall look OK is really what they'll be selling, IMO. No one wants to start at acoustical foam, but there are other approaches.
Half the TOS episodes were really bad. Much like SF short stories of the day (and mostly written by the same crowd), it was very hit-or-miss. The good episodes hold up remarkably well after 50 years (wait, 50? fuck I'm old), since they were never technology-focused. But the average show quality isn't good, because again half of em were garbage.