Are Newer Cars Frugal?

Some of you may be wondering why we chose to buy a newer vehicle when we are supposed to be trying to be more frugal with our money. Well, it was a decision we thought about for quite a while.

The major problem was the old van. It was ten years old when we bought it last year for about $2600, and seemed fine for a while. But then things suddenly started going on it, one by one. We were spending so much on it, we might as well have had a car payment! Now, we could have tried scraping enough together for another old vehicle, but it just didn't make sense. My husband doesn't know how to make major repairs, and we only have one family vehicle, so having another car that would potentially need repeated repairs wasn't feasible. Plus, my husband drives 90 miles round trip to work each day. He really needed the security and peace of mind that his only vehicle wouldn't break down on him. We have no family or friends in the area, so who would pick him up?

Also, the cars he has owned that he purchased fairly new were all reliable and ran well for a long time. Our truck had almost 300,000 miles on it when we got rid of it, and was still going strong. The cars we bought that already had high miles tended to have problems. It just seems that we get more usage out of cars when we've had control over the car for most of its life. We're not super-careful with our maintenance or anything, I guess a lot of people just abuse their cars.

We just figured it was worth the investment. Plus a newer car gets better gas mileage than old worn out cars. And the previous owner took the hit on the depreciation, leaving us with an almost-new car for a very good price. I'm guessing about ten thousand less than new.

We did a lot of research and carefully chose a model that would fit our needs and wants. It wasn't completely loaded (for the Town & Country--compares to other vans it was) but it had what we really wanted. We also checked the CarFax report to make sure it hadn't been flooded, totalled, etc. It had been owned by a rental company, but leased by an individual customer the entire time. Probably an executive car.

We felt the car would fit in our budget because we could count on no repairs for a good while (still under manufacturer's warranty) and we had recently given up other expenses that added up to about the amount of the car payment. We did have to pay more for insurance, but I never liked having only liability coverage anyway.

Now, buying a newer car might not make sense for other families, particularly if the husband is really good at fixing cars, but for us it was a good choice.