Is the very worst financial decision you can ever make in your life. Even if you have an 820 credit rating and get 0.9 APR, you're still taking a massive ass fucking. Nobody reading this has an 820 credit rating, either.
Recent statistics show that one-third of car buyers sign up for a six-year loan at an average interest rate of 9.6%. Among these buyers, the average price of the car is just over $26,000. This means that one-third of the cars you see on the road are dragging a $475 payment behind them.
The car dealer won’t tell you that your awesome new car loses about 25% of its value the instant you drive it off the lot. After four years, your car has lost about 70% of its value.
What does that mean? After six years, you’ve paid almost $33,000 for a $26,000 car, which is now worth maybe $6,000. Not a good deal.
Here’s a new plan. What if you bought a cheap $2,000 car just to get around for 10 months? Then you take that $475—the average car payment—save it every month, and pay for a new car (with cash!), instead of giving it to the bank.
After 10 months of doing that, you’ll have $4,750 to use for that new ride. Add that to the $1,500–2,000 you can get for your old beater, and you have well over $6,000. That’s a major upgrade in car in just 10 months.
But the fun doesn’t end there. If you keep consistently putting the same amount of money away, 10 months later you would have another $4,750 to put toward a car. You could probably sell that $6,000 vehicle for about the same price you paid 10 months before—meaning you now have $11,000 to pay for a car, just 20 months after this whole process started. And you never paid the bank a dime.
