Just some free finance advice. Vehicles are a money sink, they only lose you value. If you aren’t comfortable with the concept of losing money, DO NOT buy an expensive vehicle. But the cheapest used car you can with cash on hand. Now, that’s not possible for everyone. And it’s not practical for everyone, it might be in your best interest to lease a vehicle for a monthly fee. Your lease should be with a reputable car dealer that has some kind of agreement to regularly maintain the car, and to trade it in often for another car without increasing your fees. The goal here is to pay as little as you can, and trade in often so you don’t ever reach the point of needing serious repairs to the vehicle. Different situations have different needs, no one size solution works. But I’d HIGHLY discourage taking out a large debt in order to buy a new car. Your losing money you don’t have. That’s a bad idea. Then again, bankruptcy has few downsides when you are already poor.
There’s a point where the cheapest used car can end up costing more than a slightly more expensive one. While I agree with your advice generally, I’d instead recommend buying the most reliable used vehicle you can afford.
Having seen how expensive a cheap car can really be (that’s all my mom could afford as a kid, and did that come back to bite her regularly), I won’t go lower than CPO when doing a purchase. I bought used without a CPO exactly once, and I was very glad it got totaled before I had to put a bunch of money into it (and that insurance said it was worth more than I owed so I got a decent down payment on the next one).
Sidenote: If you work for yourself or have your own business, leasing is a great option.
Oh no! Anyways.
You bad they didn’t get GAP insurance
Gap insurance is a scam in “most” instances. But dropping 100+k driving off the lot… Wait no it’s still a scam, he’s is just a fucking idiot for buying it in the first place …
Every insurance is a scam right up until you need it. Gap is cheap as hell and if you can’t budget for it you should have the cash in hand to replace your vehicle.
For what it ACTUALLY pays and how long it lasts, it is extremely expensive. Most people it is good for 3-4 months and that’s only if they don’t put ANYTHING down. Trade in a car? Put money down? GAP is useless.
And every month you go without totaling your car it is worth much less.
And if a car/truck depreciates enough driving off the lot for GAP to make sense. You’re paying too much for new and should buy used if you want that particular model.
Yes every month I don’t use it. The month I did use it I’ll be pretty happy won’t I.
You “won” the lotto, good for you?
Maybe I got lucky. But I financed half of a car once, got the GAP insurance, and was hit at a red light.
The car was totaled, but I was also upside down on the loan. I ended up walking away with a profit.
It definitely feels like a risk/reward thing. But Im glad I had it when I needed it. I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily a scam, but I do feel like regular car insurance is.
Breaks out world’s tiniest violin…
What’s the problem? He got $77k because that’s what’ll cost him to buy a used Cybertruck, which will put him back to where he was before the accident. The financial loss he’s taken already happened way before the accident.
This is why you also need gap insurance for anything but the cheapest cars. It exists to prevent this situation.
Or you just don’t spend 200K on a cybertruck if you don’t have that kind of money. What is a cybertruck going to do for you that a 10K second hand truck can’t? Even if your second hand 10K truck burns down after a year, you can still buy a new one every year for 20 years for 200K.
I don’t think a $10K secondhand pickup truck exists anymore.-- At least not one with a working engine.
Wut? My current tow vehicle was $3800, and I’m currently shopping for another pickup at <$2000. Cheap trucks still exist. People are getting too picky about how new it needs to be. Or they don’t want to turn wrenches.
Wtf? They paid twice the price of the “value”?
Cars depreciate hella quick when you drive off the lot.
Yeah but even if it halved immediately, it should’ve gone from 100k to 50k. What this is saying, is this mfer paid twice the MSRP for a god damned cyber truck.
Edit: and this is good news. Fuck that guy and everyone like him.
There’s nothing saying he didn’t overpay in the first place either!
The owner is figuring out what everyone else knew: the swastitruck isn’t worth half of the money Melon is asking for it.
Im not sure how they paid that much. I didn’t think even the cyber beast was that expensive.
Read the article, he paid a broker $50k to buy one of the first ones. $150k is still crazy.
Complaining about the depreciation of that vehicle with extra steps.
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almost forgot the obligatory reply
Fake fucking news. Why is everyone latching on to this like it was real?
77k + 171k = 198k. This guy should not own anything.
I think he owes 171 on a 198 loan, the insurance scumbags offered him 77, leaving him with 94
Like others have said, $77k gets him into a used Cybertruck equivalent to what he had before. Insurance is systemically bad for so many reasons but it absolutely makes sense if it weren’t so morally corrupt and this is the part that makes sense. If I crashed my 2015 BRZ today I wouldn’t expect the full $25k I paid for it in 2018(although with the way used prices have been, I might actually get close to that, but that does not disagree with my point).
Admittedly I don’t know how insurance works beyond the 10k ft view of “exploiting people for profit” and I’ve never totaled a vehicle
Well, out of the three replies I’ve recieved in different conversations this morning you’re the first to admit that you aren’t a turbo super genius(and boy, were others obviously wrong about the topic) so despite not knowing stuff you’re still coming out way far ahead haha
LOL
As someone who has totaled like 4 cars, its never been nearly enough to buy a replacement for that same car.
Google started recommending this site to me recently, and it’s garbage. It’s all unverified social media posts told in the first person. Shit is WILD.
I dunno how likely it is to find a peer-reviewed article about this. It’s not like “cybertruck owner made horribly bad financial decision” is breaking news, it’s just the status quo.
