New cars got ever-so-slightly more affordable this year, with more incentives being offered to get inflation-weary buyers off the sideline. While this is good for your average buyer, there’s been a trend towards long loans with $1,000+ monthly payments that hasn’t reversed post-pandemic. In fact, new data shows it’s getting worse.
I feel confident that my Morning Dump proclamation that 2024 was going to be the year of the hybrid was correct, and I see no data to indicate that’ll change in 2024. Early Q4 numbers from Hyundai and Kia show real enthusiasm for cars with both kinds of powerplants.
Rivian is a pure EV company and has no hybrids to lean on, which means it has to convince people to buy its expensive electric vehicles. Supply shortages constrained production, but it looks like a strong end of the year allowed Rivian to squeeze out a sales increase this year (INB4 someone points out that Rivian still loses money on every vehicle).
Rivian wasn’t the only automaker with production issues this year. The entire nation of Italy saw its lowest production since… well, since most of us were born.
Nearly 1-in-5 Shoppers Spent $1,000 Or More On Monthly Payments In Q4
I managed to finance a new car this year and keep the monthly payments roughly similar to what I paid eight years ago. The catch? Because of a more expensive car and higher interest rates, I had to add 12 months of payments. It’s not ideal, and my current plan is to keep my Honda CR-V Hybrid for at least 12 years/120,000 miles.
Data shows that I’m the exception, benefiting both from a good credit score and a trade-in, which I got a good price for when I made my purchase. According to Edmunds, in Q4 a record 18.9% of consumers got a car loan for above $1,000 a month.
Some of this has to do with rates, of course, with Edmunds reporting that just 2.4% of all new vehicles were sold with a loan featuring 0% financing. Some relief appears to be coming with the average APR dropping to 6.8%, down slightly from last quarter.
“Although they tend to skew a bit higher at year-end, the record highs in auto financing amounts that were set in Q4 are the culmination of major challenges to new-vehicle affordability that consumers faced in 2024,” said Jessica Caldwell, Edmunds’ head of insights. “It’s getting more and more difficult for the average shopper to walk into a new-car dealership and leave with a set of keys without feeling like they are forced to create extra room in their budget from some other aspect of life. The one bright spot is that interest rates seem to finally be on a downward trajectory, so buyers are at least getting more car for their buck rather than allocating their payments to interest.”
This reminds me of that video from the one dealership a couple of years back that showed employees there spending upwards of $1,000 a month on new car payments. It was treated as an aberration at the time, and the dealership faced a huge backlash in the media. What’s clear is that it’s not an aberration. While it’s not the average new car loan, it’s more common than it’s ever been.
Not to oversimplify, but it does seem like there are two distinct types of buyers in the market. Many consumers want/need a new car and end up attempting to get a deal. A lot of these people are moving into the compact SUV and subcompact SUV space. Then there are people who want a specific car or truck and are willing to take a huge monthly payment, a longer-term loan, or both.
The average new car loan in the US last quarter was 68.8 months, with a $754 monthly payment at 6.8% APR with $43,113 financed and a down payment of $6,856. Doing a little math and keeping everything the same, that’s more than $1,000 a month for a 48-month loan at the same rate (though, you’d likely get a better interest rate for the shorter term). This is why I say it’s “the new normal,” because the market is continuing to stretch payments.
This isn’t to say there aren’t good deals to be had, but since Trimflation kicked in it’s clear that automakers don’t want to go back to lower pricing unless they have to, and will instead keep ratcheting up incentives. That’s fine if you want a Nissan Rogue, but good deals are going to be harder to find on something like a Range Rover.
As you can see in the graphic above from Cox Automotive, there’s a real split between the popularity of more affordable compacts and more expensive SUVs and trucks when it comes to market share.
What do you do if you want a reasonable car payment? Edmunds has some good advice:
“For longstanding new-car buyers coming back to the market for the first time in years, used purchases and new EV leases are your best bets to keep your monthly payment in line with what you were accustomed to in pre-pandemic times,” said Ivan Drury, Edmunds’ director of insights. “Going down either route presents traditional new-car shoppers with a couple of options: sticking with what you know — buying a used car similar to your current one but with some upgraded features — or embracing the future with an electric vehicle.
Pretty much, yeah.
Kia And Hyundai Set New Records On The Back Of A Lot Of Hybrids
It’s quite amazing how much Kia and Hyundai have grown in the United States, and if there’s any hint for Nissan and Honda on what to do when your country arranges a marriage for you, I guess step one is hiring Jeff Bridges.
My brother-in-law got a hybrid Santa Fe this year to replace his Ford Flex and it rules. I could not argue against the choice in any way, though I was sad to see the Flex go. He was not alone in his purchase, Hyundai reported a record Q4/December/Year, delivering a total of 836,802 vehicles in 2024. The company said it hit new monthly sales records for the Santa Fe HEV (+87%), Tucson HEV (+133%), and IONIQ 5 (+41%). Hybrid vehicle total sales jumped 85%, while total EV sales grew 12%, overall.
Kia came within striking distance of besting Hyundai, with 796,488 units sold in total. The brand didn’t break out hybrid sales, but with similar lineups, my guess is that Kia sold a ton of hybrids.
We’ll have more sales coming in from other automakers this week, so we can see if this trend is isolated to the South Korean automakers.
Rivian Turns It Around, Sort Of
The Rivian R1S and R1T are great vehicles, but like all startup automakers, it’s been a tough transition for Rivian into the new EV paradigm. The company was probably on the way to decent sales and production until an embarrassing mistake led to a supply shortage of critical motor wiring.
Rivian says the issue has been resolved and it’ll get production back, though it’s not clear quite how much production Rivian will need. Last year, the company made 49,476 vehicles, down from the 57,232 vehicles it made in 2023. By comparison, the company did sell 51,579 vehicles, which is slightly up from the 50,122 vehicles it sold in 2023.
In Q3, Rivian lost $39,130 for every truck it built, which is not great. The company has had better news lately, securing a major investment from Volkswagen and a big loan from the Biden Administration.
Rivian stock is up today, so make of that what you will.
Italy Hits A 68-Year-Low For Car Production
Stellantis and Italy aren’t exactly the best of friends right now, though some of that might have to do with the brusque leadership of outgoing exec Carlos Tavares, pictured above.
The country no longer has poor Carlos to kick around anymore, but that doesn’t mean all is suddenly well. Italy’s FIM-CISL union said the company cut manufacturing to just 475,090 vehicles, way down from the 751,384 that were made in Italy in 2023. Overall, production of non-commerical vehicles in Italy was down 46%, to the lowest level since 1956.
FIM-CISL said it would join a protest planned in Brussels by labour organisation IndustriALL Europe on Feb. 5, two weeks before the European Commission presents its “clean industrial deal”.
The union’s leader Ferdinando Uliano said it was important to review EU targets for vehicles’ carbon emissions reduction due to kick in from 2025.
“This is a battle for Europe,” Uliano said, speaking about the crisis facing the European car industry. “Single countries can only lose.”
Don’t worry, Chinese automakers are willing and excited to make up the gap.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
Here’s A Tribe Called Quest on an “Award Tour” with Trugoy the Dove from De La Soul. Never let a statue tell you how nice you are.
The Big Question
What’s the most you would ever pay per month for a new car?
Top image: News 12 Long Island/BMW
I can’t imagine paying 1K a month for a car loan.Maybe I’m too old or cheap but no way I’m dishing out that for 60-72 months on something that loses value and will be pretty much worthless when the payments are finished.Too many buyers don’t look at the whole picture.When the roof needs to be replaced or the fridge takes a crap and you have no savings to draw from that 1K payment all of a sudden pretty silly.
Close to half of Americans don’t even have $500 saved up…
That is a falsehood pushed by payday lender companies and other misleading actors.
The median American has a liquid account balance of $8,000 and even for people younger than 35, it is $5,400.
https://www.bankrate.com/banking/savings/savings-account-average-balance/#how-much-does-the-average-household-have-in-savings
On top of that, there are hardship withdrawals from pensions and 401(k)s. I was “illiquid on paper” for a really long time because sitting on cash did nothing for us. Keeping good credit and retirement accounts are a cushio against hardship, too — but they don’t sell clicks.
IMHO, if you have substantial equity in a house, there is no reason to keep a cash “emergency fund” sitting around losing value. I only keep enough “cash” on hand to meet my monthly bills plus a couple grand for emergencies. Plus $750K in HELOCs.
I’m in a profession that is a lawsuit magnet. Pretty much every penny I have is shoved into 401K and college saving accounts, where creditors can’t touch.
Obgyn?
“Doctors can bury their mistakes. Engineers have to live with them.”
Literally on that link:
The fact there is an average of 8k in their account doesn’t mean that money isn’t already flagged for debt payments. Many people have money in an account they cant spend because its already essentially spent on rent/food/car taxes/etc.
Is a car note an unexpected expense?
Also, the original claim was “half of Americans don’t have $500 saved” which is not the same question.
“Lies, damned lies, and statistics” The median being $8000 means ~165M people have a less than that. And many are going to have a LOT less than that. And $8K is nothing today.
I have done reasonably well in life, and I sure as hell did not have $5400 sitting around in cash money until I was well into my 40s.
You, and the other guy who replied to me, are arguing against strawmen.
The original claim was “close to half of Americans don’t have $500 saved”.
The data presented shows that claim was wrong by a factor of 16x.
The economy need not be perfect for every single person before we can recognize that it’s pretty good for the majority of people, and that the excess of doomer rhetoric we see in the media (and which just helped elect an unqualified and unpredictable president) is not commensurate with actual facts.
$500 when that statement was made 20+ years ago is many thousands today. The point is that far too many Americans cannot cover a surprise bill without reaching for a credit card. Or a loan shark. The exact amount of that bill is neither here nor there. There were certainly times in my life when if I had $500 in the bank that wasn’t pre-spent on bills I felt like I was rich.
I was lucky enough to have the “First Bank of the Old Man” when emergencies came up when I was a poor. His terms weren’t great, but I was always pre-approved at least. And I was VERY careful to maintain my credit rating with him. But that is a privilege denied to many who are in generational poverty.
I don’t think you are completely wrong, but $5,500 of my monthly income is already spent. If I had a high balance of $6,500, I still would only have $1K of actual money. Not sure how Bankrate accounts for that; even the average daily balance would be very misleading.
Buy the right car. I spent $40K on my BMW wagon 14 years ago. I still have it, it’s still worth $20K all day long and it’s not really depreciating at this point.
“honey we are just going to skip a dinner every day”
I will never buy a new car. Ever. There are new cars that I can afford, but I’m not interested in them. And the new cars I am interested in, I can’t afford.
I rarely say never. But I can say that I have bought quite a few new cars when there were new cars that I wanted to buy, and today there are none. And the way the industry seems to be going I don’t expect that to change. Saves me a LOT of money, so I really should thank them.
We bought one new car on 1999. Our eldest continues to drive it today. Never again. We are much better off today. Still no interest in new cars. We can afford it in cash but have far less desire to buy new than when we were younger.
I currently have 3 car payments. All of which add up to less than 1k/month. I simply cannot fathom paying that much for a car. My mortgage isn’t even that much per month.
I’m 54 and have never bought a new vehicle, but the last time I bought a used one was 2012, and I financed that for 42 months at about $400 a month, as I recall. As far as our household income, we do okay, my wife bought a K5 last March and the payments are $420 a month. But there’s not room right now for us to add another car payment, probably all my toys aren’t helping too much lol but the idea of a $1000 car payment is a world I can’t fathom living in.
This is a me problem I guess.
Probably bears repeating, but if you have the cash to buy a car outright, you might want to consider taking a 7% loan if your cash can be used elsewhere for better purposes…obviously the market is a gamble and the days of 9% I Bonds are long gone.
I understand that a lot of people are pretty hardline “debt-averse” but don’t forget it’s just one tool among many. Wise used of debt is they key. It isn’t a neverending treadmill so you can continue chasing increasingly more expensive vehicles each time, or purchasing more frequently than needed.
Also, always align the length of the loan to the life of the asset (derp: “Keep car past payoff”) and that sometimes means buying GAP insurance.
7% isn’t a great rate for this type of thing. 7% is about the inflation-adjusted return of the market historically so at best you’re breaking even. If you can get a good financing deal and not give up other incentives then I’m totally with you, but I’d never play this game at 7%.
For a new car 7% is terrible if you have good credit. Also GAP is illegal in my state because it’s a scam.
Agree that 7% is not a good rate if you have great credit. Disagree that GAP insurance is a scam. The PRICE of it can be a scam, but the coverage itself can be useful in the right circumstances. I can simply buy it from my car insurance company for very little per month, not that I *ever* plan to be underwater on a car loan ever again. Got burned that way on my first new car, never again.
I own a stock that traded at about 4 bucks a share in 2019.
It’s a well known and long established financial firm in the US.
At market close today it was $125 a share…
For only $1 buck a day you can subscribe to my newsletter and possibly have results as profitable as I have.
Or not. YMMV.
1k a month? My future is going to be filled with cheap used cars and Amazon parts. I mean, that’s also my present, but still
If new cars are $1000/mo how long do you think used cars will stay cheap?
There’s always 95 Cavilers available. Dang things are cockroaches.
The ecotec in it will outlast the whole shell.
Even roaches have kryptonite. In this case its salt.
But like roaches, if you go into certain areas, you will still see them, perhaps in non-operating shape, but still for sale for payments under $1000/month at a Buy Here/Pay Here center.
I don’t shop BHPH so I’ll take your word for it.
Yeah, neither do I. The good news is that they aren’t $1000/month. The bad news is that they are $300/week for a 95 Caviler.
I once wanted to make a cash purchase and a BHPH had a car I thought was cool (can’t remember what it was). I knew book value was about $4k. I asked how much to buy with cash outright and they refused to tell me. Offered $200/week for 6 years. PASS. They got that deal by the end of the day.
It’s insane how badly they screw the poor with bad credit ratings.
Someone who can fork over $200/week is poor?
Someone that THINKS they can fork over $200/week and actually can’t and has the car taken away within a couple weeks.
But in reality, it will be something like $80/week or something less.
I think less. If someone can’t afford to pay $4k for a primary car I imagine even $80/so will be a stretch too.
Used cars will *always* be from free to barely cheaper than a new one depending on age and condition. And a bit of luck. And I have gotten two free cars in my life.
It helps to have elderly relatives who realize the shouldn’t be driving anymore.
How I got my first free car!
This entire comment section:
https://imgur.com/gallery/ooh-dont-poo-poo-nickel-lisa-q6B8JgY
In those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on ’em. “Give me 5 bees for a quarter”, you’d say.
Being a cheap bastard and having a brain where perceived value of things is stuck around year 2010, $1K a month for a car seems insane to me. I haven’t financed a car in probably 10 years and I was paying like $400/mo back then, and managed to pay it off early. Guess I’ll stick to my tactic of having multiple older vehicles that fill my needs without a car payment.
same here. plus i will not be totally shocked with depreciation. maybe even appreciation in value if im lucky LOL
Plus, older (pre-2020) vehicles seem better built/more solid and will probably last longer anyway. Seems like all the mainstream manufacturers have failed to heed Continental CEO Gordon Bethune’s warning that when it comes to products you simply cannot make something so cheap and janky that nobody wants to buy it.
Entirely depends on the terms of the loan. My current loan is ~$500/month, but I’m probably going to pay it off in less than 2 years, since my cash is no longer accruing more interest than the loan costs. So I’ve begun paying more than $1k/month to speed things up without depleting my savings (it would be “smarter” to pay it off right away, but it would leave me with far lower savings than I would like). I don’t think I’d take a loan with an expected payment that high unless I had the savings to buy it in cash, but that cash was earning significantly more than the interest on the loan.
I hesitate to say never. I thought I would always buy cars outright. I thought I would never lease. I thought my payment would always be less than $300. But my circumstances changed, interest rates changed, and my outlook changed. $1000 car payments seem like a lot, but I don’t know what my situation will look like the next time I buy.
Congrats to A Tribe Called Quest on their induction into the R&R Hall of Fame.
I tell ya, when I think “rock and roll!”, the FIRST group that comes to mind is A Tribe Called Quest!!
/s
I get it but you can’t induct Bob Segar every year!
Sorry, Seger
“Nearly 1-in-5 Shoppers Spent $1,000 Or More On Monthly Payments In Q4”
Which tells me 1-in-5 shoppers are either pretty well off or are over-leveraged idiots who are terrible with money… or a combo of these two.
“In Q3, Rivian lost $39,130 for every truck it built, which is not great.”
Rumor has it that for Q4, they’ll have a gross profit as the cost cutting and bringing key components in-house has greatly reduced their costs.
“What’s the most you would ever pay per month for a new car?”
$0/month. When it comes to cars, I do it the old fashioned way and pay cash. And the only exception to that was to take advantage of a 0% interest rate offer… and then pay it off at the end of the low interest rate period.
In my view, that doesn’t count as a ‘payment’ if I have the cash to pay it off tomorrow if I wanted to.
What kind of money are you talking about when you say you are paying cash? I try not to assume numbers on these types of comments but I get the same vibes I do about dropping large down payments on a house. I find it to be a waste of money because it would either damn near wipe me out or I’ve never had that kind of money on hand ever in my life. I realize interest rates today aren’t great but there’s just no way in the world I’m dropping multiple 10’s of thousands on a car or upwards of $80k for a 20% down payment of the average cost of house these days. That just comes across as a rich person’s thing to do. Again not trying to assume your situation but I’d definitely like to have a clearer picture because this is something I’ll likely never experience.
Well this past summer, I dropped a little over CAD$18K after tax to buy a mint condition low mileage 2017 Ford C-Max plug in hybrid. Now having said that, before buying the vehicle, I took advantage of a 0% interest rate offer on one of my credit cards which is due to be paid off next month. And thus, I was able to leave savings/investments in place earing a return for a while longer.
But if that 0% offer didn’t pop up, I would have paid it off upfront.
Now a house is a different story as it’s an asset that actually holds value and the interest rates on a mortgage are usually lower than on a car loan (unless you’re taking advantage of a low interest rate offer).
And I do have a mortgage at a very competitive interest rate.
I’m not saying nobody should ever borrow to buy a vehicle. But for me, I’m only describing what I do.
Also, I understand that in some places in the USA, it’s hugely advantageous for tax reasons to lease. But I don’t live in an area like that.
But if I did, I would do the thing that makes the most financial sense.
The way most people get $80k to make a downpayment on a $400k house is by having owned a $200k house or condo for a decade and then they sold it and it had appreciated to $300k in that time and they netted $100k from the sale. They were not and still are not remotely “rich” and $400k is a very cheap house in most places in this country and not available at all in many others. The first house/condo/whatever is the one for which you scrimp, save, pay mortgage insurance on and maybe take a second job or figure out a side hustle if needed to make it work. But anything after that first one if you’re not putting 20% down you are most usually committing to paying a higher interest rate or looking at a second mortgage (which effectively does the same thing more or less) so it completely makes sense to put more down.
But you certainly don’t take on any more of a car payment than you absolutely need to until your housing situation is set in stone, i.e. no longer at the mercy of a landlord.
As far as a car goes, if the house situation is in place, and a new car loan is 7% today, if you have the money go ahead and pay for the car in cash, you’ve just locked in a 7% gain. Lots of younger folk think the stock market just goes up, like it’s done for most of their lives now, however that’s not always the case, hasn’t always been the case, nor is it guaranteed to be the case going forward.
The paid-for car, if need be in an absolute emergency if or if life all went wrong somehow (medical, divorce, some other unanticipatable catastrophe), can always be unloaded at CarMax or whatever, you’ll of course take a hit but you’ll also have a pile of cash that same day (instead of having to come up with a car payment on a perhaps underwater loan while enmeshed in that same emergency because you can’t sell the car on Craigslist quickly enough…)
Thanks. That was well said.
And not to be a downer here, but few seem to remember the financial uncertainty of the early 2000s, and even the crash of 2008/9…
I’ve never had a new car loan, but a few used car loans over last 50 years.
Just hate the owing money thing. Usually pay cash, but that requires a stash of cash which is hard for most of us regular folks to save up.
My highest car payment was $190 a month, 5 years on a 10 month old 1991 Toyota truck. In 1991. Don’t recall the interest rate though.
Now days a 1K month payment seems nuts to me…YMMV
400$ is my max, and it has to be something I really want. But if I need a decent car. 300$
Good lord, I make a comfortable income and get a car allowance from work, but $1000 for a car payment still seems insane to me. Even my $400/month loan (which falls well under my car allowance, so my job effectively pays the loan) seems too high.
All my cars prior to this one I bought used paying cash, but in the earlier phases of COVID, I saw the handwriting on the wall for interest rates climbing and MSRPs climbing, so I splurged for a new EV while rates were low, prices hadn’t yet gone insane, and I could still take full advantage of the $7500 EV credit and state incentives.
I was typing the exact same comment when yours appeared. Unless you are stupid rich (and then why are you bothering with a long term finance) I can’t conceive of paying $1000 per month for a rapidly depreciating shiny bauble.
Just finished my 36 month brz loan at $217 a month. No more new cars.
Thanks for bringing back “pictured above” but my $300/month payment never will.
The last car loan I ever had was roughly $500/mo, but that was for a 24-month loan. This was back in the mid 80s when interest rates then made today’s rates look like bargains. Paid that car loan off a bit early and had 28+ years of payment free driving thereafter (excepting insurance, natch). I can’t even fathom a $1000/mo payment or even $500 a month for five or six years. And that on top of wildly inflated insurance! Guess it’s used cars and cash only for me from here on out.
I’ve only purchased one new car and that was in 2014. My payment was ~$200 a month for 60 months. I can’t see going over ~$300 a month on the same loan term. That’ll mean a much larger down payment.
Weeping christmas. I’m uncomfortable with my $500/month note, how do you get in the hole for a key?
Yikes. For both cars we’re paying nowhere near that. I think I’d take the prospect of a $1k payment that I’m either:
Extremely well off.It’s time to pick a less expensive car.
My max is ~$500 for a car payment, no more than 4 to 5 years of payments depending on the car.
I have owned 12 cars and never made a car payment on a single one. I think I will continue that trend. Even my wife’s car is only ~$250 a month or so.
So all of those 12 cars were stolen?
LOL
I mean, even if you’re paying cash, you technically have to make ONE payment for each of those cars…
If you’re fast enough, ANYTHING is free. But you’ve got me there, each car did have a one-time payment made.
We’ve all been doing it wrong for years?!?
Prices will continue to rise because people are willing to take out loans to pay them. with no downward pressure (on demand) and constant demand for ‘features’ cars will not get simpler nor cheaper.
Interest rates dropping will not make payments ‘more affordable’, they’ll just allow people to take out larger loans to buy more expensive vehicles.
Feel free to prove me wrong…. if you can. History is on my side, and it won’t be different this time around.
Car payments are the new college tuition…cheap loans almost always = microinflation. Mr Biden, where is my car loan forgiveness??
I can’t wait until we’re sitting in 2028 and somehow you’re blaming biden for privatizing social security.
I blame him for libraries, too. Poor people can just leave with free educational materials?! We can’t have this. (I thought /s tag was unneeded, sorry). Related, but my SIL had a lot of student loans around 2012 and used her mom’s house to refi them, eliminating her from forgiveness. D’oh!
Not here.
I’ve got a pretty healthy income (and a car allowance via work) and have no interest in letting my payments go up- last couple cars were in the mid 500’s a month. I could maybe see going up to the low 6’s, but beyond that, especially with the insurance increases lately feels like too much budget going to a car.
Amazing how so many people are able and willing to absorb a $1000+ payment in such a bad economy /s
And no, delinquencies are not up appreciably over long term trends, splashy headlines aside.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/rising-auto-loan-delinquencies-and-high-monthly-payments-20240926.html
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DRCLACBS
Welcome to the vibe economy, right? It’s an underappreciated aspect of how the internet affects our economy in that it colors our perception of it, which then connects to our emotions which then reinforce the perception. It’s very much the stock market ethos now applied to the real economy.
Everywhere you look, people are spending on luxuries like never before, then turning around and telling pollsters that the economy is terrible.
What intrigues me is these are often the same people willing to take out 8 year car loans, so clearly they have longer term faith in the strength of it.
My sister-in-law justified her vote for Trump by saying she was worried about the economy, a week after that her husband bought a brand new Tundra and she bought a $1500 purebred maine coon cat, so yeah I can definitely see why the economy was such a talking point for them.
Many such cases!
Buying a cat from a breeder is wrong.
If you’re in the survivorship bias (which based on your age, occupation and assets you most definitely are) things are A-1 okee dokee, what are you complaining about plebs?
If you’re in the outgroup (young enough to have not been in a career field prior to the recession, not established in a relatively high paying professional field, not property owning) it feels very much like it’s about time to put a new spin on songs about lakes of stew and short handled shovels.
I’m sure it does to some people, but as someone who graduated college in 2007, was laid off in early 2009, and didn’t find stable work with benefits in my field again until 2012, I find it a bit hard to take seriously the complaints about this economy (with its rising wages in all quintiles, record stock markets, low unemployment, and so on). Doubly so when peoples’ behavior does not match their rhetoric.
Our company isn’t exactly doing a Scrooge McDuck impersonation in the past few years, but it wasn’t nearly a tenth as bad as it was in 2008-2010.
All things considered the post-COVID years have been pretty darn good. I can’t even complain about inflation because my effective mortgage rate became negative. Thanks JP Morgan Chase.
Yeah refinancing into a 2.XX% mortgage in 2020 on a house that had doubled in value since 2015 felt like cosmic payback for missing out on 3 full years of 401k contributions and savings.
My brain says “$300 a month!” but that’s because the only two cars I’ve ever financed were around that level. And it’s a dumb mental exercise — the first one was 100% financing in 1995 (you might say “when cars were affordable” but $15k got me 115hp, no cruise control, no CD player…). The second was in 2015 but we put 40% down from home equity, as was the tradition at the time.
My mental hurdle is still sub-$500, but as a finance nerd it depends on how the market is doing. If I’m looking at another 25% S&P return, then I’m going to finance as much as they’ll allow, mental hurdles be damned 😉
No cruse? No CD player? How did you survive? Wait, are you sure you’re not dead like that guy in the movie?
Crutchfield solved the CD problem pretty quickly. You can imagine how thrilled parents are when you start tearing your dash apart a month after getting the car, but that was my first car DIY experience and it never really stopped. Cruise is overrated, but it also helps to have a car that’s loud enough, you never really want to drive more than 2 hours.
Agreed, Cruise is over rated. I knew it from the beginning. Risky Business introduced this face punch-able guy but how can you ruin a movie with Fast Eddie Felson?