Have you ever considered the best time to buy and sell a car for maximum cost efficiency? #carbuyingtips #usedcars #costeffective
Is it true that purchasing a vehicle at 10 years old and selling it at 15 years old is the most economical approach? Let’s explore the data behind this popular belief.
– **Dad’s Advice**: A Common Wisdom
– Dad’s often share money-saving tips, but does this one stand up to scrutiny?
– **Research & Analysis**
– Is there concrete evidence supporting this claim? Let’s dig into the data.
– **Financial Benefits**
– The potential savings and advantages of buying and selling a car within specific age ranges.
Next time you’re in the market for a vehicle, consider the 10-15 year window for optimal cost-effectiveness. This strategy may just prove beneficial in the long run! #carcostefficiency #carbuyingstrategy #savemoneyoncars
It’s very likely true from a cost perspective. I like to buy whenever the steepest part of the depreciation curve is over. After 2-5 years cars tend to be notably cheaper than new, but way nicer and much less headache than an older car.
I never heard this but it sounds like good Dad advice to me. Ever since I was financially able to buy my own vehicles I have only bought Toyotas since my Dad had a Toyota Corolla that ran forever and I have never been disappointed. I think the make of vehicle is much more important than it’s age but I definitely agree with buying used. Unless it’s your dream to spend a boatload of money to buy a new car and you won’t be happy unless it’s new always buy used.
I’ve always tried to buy a ~3 y/o low mileage car and kept it 7. I haven’t done all the math and consideration on other alternatives, but it has seemed like a good sweet spot. That provides a modern and reliable car (if you’re screening for reliability in models), past the initial depreciation point. Known issues with that specific model in mind are available to screen in online reviews before purchase.
*”low mileage” on my barometer has been 10k or under per year of age.
It depends on a few things such as: Does the newest technology matter a lot to you? Are you handy enough to reduce some of the cost to maintain an older vehicle? How much time do you spend in your vehicle? Etc.
I would say after the first 3-5 years the depreciation has slowed considerably, and you might not save as much as you think buying a 5 year vs a 10 year old vehicle when including maintenance. Also consider that a factory warranty can be very beneficial if you buy something within the warranty period/mileage, which varies by manufacturer.
There could be many factors that influence this decision
Eh, but how much work are you going to have to put into this 10 year old car. I’d just say it’s not bad advice but, depends.
It’s generally true, but the car market is really weird right now.
Your dad’s smart. I think a mileage caveat is more important than years (unless you live in a snowy area where the car will rust). Buy a 10 year old car at 60-80k miles, sell it when it gets to 100-120k. A 10 year old car well maintained will still have lots of life left, but you’ve avoided the onslaught of most of the big maintenance items. When those big maintenance items kick in depends on the car, so read the maintenance schedule and figure out what’s going to come up in your ownership.
Does this analysis value downtime as cost? 10+ year old cars need more maintenance than newer cars. I usually run cars to 150-200k miles and at that point I’m typically in the shop for issues a couple times a year. Things like whether the car has new tires start to impact the value of this.
depends highly on where you live. 10 year old car in Vermont is nearly trashed already in most cases
I’m turning 40 this year and the last two 10-year old Honda’s I’ve bought ($5k and $10k) have ran me 90k-250k miles and 90k-195k and still running like a top. I’m getting annoyed with my Fit because I feel like it will last another 150-200k miles and I’ve sunk less than 2k into it over the past seven years.
I’m ready for change but I can’t argue with no payment, dirt-cheap insurance, and 40mpg… I could also get 5k for it even with the high miles and it being over 15 years old.
The key part of this equation is to buy a used car with a track record of reliability.
That’s really dependent on two things:
1. Your ability to buy a functioning car at a good price. Lots of people way overpay for used cars because they don’t know just how much they’ll cost to own, or they get straight scammed by whoever is selling them the vehicle. If you get a good initial deal on buying an older vehicle there’s not much that could go wrong that would make the purchase a bad one.
2. Your ability to do basic maintenance yourself. Even better if you’re willing to tackle more difficult repairs.
I hear people throw around the number 7 years instead of 10 but not sure if there’s good data out there to support either, and typically to get the most out of your vehicle just drive it until it becomes too costly to do regular maintenance or it needs major work that doesn’t justify paying for the repair. That’ll depend a lot on how many miles you’re putting on it so I’m sure for some people that’ll be before 15 years.
I remember someone crunching the numbers on this years ago and if I recall the sweet spot was something like 3-5 year old vehicle driven for 7-10 years. I don’t remember the exact numbers but they’re in that ballpark. Also those assumptions may be vastly different these days with used car prices what they are.
I don’t think it’s that simple and I think that information is a bit dated. Cars don’t depreciate like they did back in the 80’s and 90’s. The way I like to look at is in terms of utility, I expect a car to last at least 200k miles economically. Just at a quick glance if I wanted to buy a 2014 Honda Accord prices are around 14K with ~100k miles. That means I’m paying more than half of what I could by that car for new today and it’s half used up. Plus, depreciation isn’t linear, the first 100k miles were the best miles! Your buying it at a time where you get to start incurring all the maintenance and repair costs like brakes, shocks, ball joints, and wheel bearings etc. Not to mention, there’s the risk you are assuming. You don’t know if the car was run without oil because someone didn’t keep it topped off or skipped oil changes all together. I expect to get a discount to compensate me for the risk I’m taking on. So no, to me that sounds like a terrible deal. I think the primary reason people buy used cars today is mainly because they can’t afford to buy a new car and the sticker price is attractive even though the value isn’t there.
User cars over 10 years old have lower insurance, lower registration/vehicle taxes, are broken in (depending on the mileage), and still have a good 5 years on them (depending on the mileage)
I always purchase aftermarket drivetrain insurance for my used cars and you cannot get that if the car is close to or over ten years old. It also depends how well kept a car is and how many miles are on it. My second car is a 2006 diesel Jetta and is in pristine shape for instance. Bought it at 9 years of age.
Anecdotally I’ve always bought used cars with between 75,000-100,000 miles usually closer to 75,000, done the minimum amount of maintenance, and driven them until something major breaks and then sold them to someone who likes to work on cars. On my sixth car in 25 years, never paid for anything more expensive than an alternator. Used to be able to get reliable cars for $3-$4k in the 90s but paid $9k for the last one in 2019. Still going strong on nothing but oil changes.
Marketplace fluctuate with supply and demand. What I do is I buy a car new, keep them for 15+ years, and I only buy frugally.Â
I just replaced a 20 year old sedan with a brand new Ford Maverick 2024 hybrid and I paid $29K out the door. I did a loan at 6%, but paid it down to $5K in 4 months, because I saved up.Â
New vehicle is awesome truck that gets 42 MPG on average for me.
Used car market is better but still jacked up I think. It was horrendous about 18 months ago.
I’d rather buy the car when I was 15 so I could drive it when I turned 16.
He’s probably right if you don’t mind your car being in the shop every once in a while or do you own maintenance. I do most of my own work so a higher mileage car doesn’t scare me, and often works in my favor for negiotation (especially if none of the suspension work has been done) I can usually haggle the price down drastically due to this, and I can fix it in a day.
Another nice thing about buying 10+ year old vehicles is you know how long they will make it. You can see what last 300k+ miles by time they get that old.
Right now I am deep into the Toyota uz engine series plus 2 5vzs. I have 6 vehicles with those series of engines counting the company work trucks. They are know to run forever with minimal maintenance.
Car that cost me the most was the newest one I’ve ever owned. Got a insane good deal on 2016 audi in 2020 for 6k for 2016 with 100k on it. Matinince cost where insane as well as how much oil she burnt. Left me stranded multiple times. Car thats left me stranded the least. moved me my family and all our furniture across the country was a 98 f150.
Miles are more important than years, I think; but it’s not a bad rule of thumb. Here’s my method.
I look cars up in Consumer Reports and make a list of the make/models that have an Excellent rating in every category. (The ratings are based on reports from actual owners about what things have needed to be repaired/replaced.) Even a single Very Good rating in one category knocks the car off the list. This generally nets me a list of Toyotas and Hondas, with not every model year making the cut.
I then look for cars that are on that list and have over 100k miles. A lot of owners start looking to get rid of their car at 100k miles. They want to dump the car before it starts giving them trouble. They don’t realize that a Toyota or Honda has lived less than half its useful life at that point. So there are a lot of cars without problems on offer. The owners are getting rid of them solely because an arbitrary number has been exceeded.
Once I get the car, I drive it into the ground. I get rid of it when it would be cost-prohibitive to fix. By that time I’ve got plenty saved up to buy the next car for cash.
It also depends on the type of car. You don’t want to have a fancy modern car with much more than 100K miles – one sensor that goes bad can be $1500 or $2000.
I buy my fancy modern car for half the original price at 2 or 3 years old, maybe 25K or 30K miles. I keep it for 8 years or so, and trade it in with 90K miles.
It makes sense, but i think for Honda/ Toyota you can just keep it till it dies
Everyone selling an older car is doing so for a reason. It’s likely just tipping into costs more to maintain than it’s worth or more than a newer car would cost.
10+ year old cars you should be very skeptical about. Sure there’s good ones out there but there’s also a lot of shit boxes.
I’m in my late 40s and have had three cars in my life – two Hondas and one Toyota. This sounds right, I just never got around to selling them and they refused to die
This is a pretty big generalization, so I’d take it with a grain of salt. Totally depends on the make and if it was looked after well. 100k Hyundai is going to be a whole different story to a 100k Toyota.
Me I buy lightly used maybe a few years and drive it into the ground. Am I f*** buying another car every five years.
Still driving a ’98 Toyota and it runs great (though I wouldn’t take it cross country with that MPG lol)
I grew up the son of a used car salesman. We had all sorts of old used cars. My dad was always super against buying anything remotely new. I agree, he’s 100 percent correct. It’s the most cost effective way of getting around. You know what else? You drive a shitty old car which always needs repairs. I spent so many weekends as a kid helping my dad fix old cars. I learned a lot, don’t get me wrong, but now I buy new and drive until 150k miles. I don’t want to think about my car beyond getting in it to go to work.
I previously only bought 5-7 yo Toyotas and drove them for 7 more years. Once I started making more money, I now buy new Toyotas, take good care of them, and drive them for 200,000+ miles. I like to enjoy the comfort of a well maintained vehicle.
I buy usually 3 yr lease turn ins, then keto them until they die. Bought our 2004 Accord in 2007, it lasted until 2023. Bought my 2013 Murano in 2016 and letting it until it dies.
I bought a 5 year old truck. I’ve now owned it for 17. There’s too many variables to say that any of these years you mentioned are a viable formula though. A 10 year old BMW will probably give you problems within a year or two. A 10 year old Toyota could be relatively worry free for another 10 years. Any brand, if abused and poorly maintained could give you problems after any amount of years, regardless of the age of it when you purchase it. Make, model, model year (this is key, some years are “lemon years”), condition and mileage are all more important than simply the age of the vehicle.
How the hell can a 10 yr old afford a car?
I bought a used certified tundra with 5k miles. Came with a 100k miles bumper to bumper.
This is great advice if you live in an area where cars do not rust. In any state that throws salt on the roads the vehicles become ticking bombs for when corrosion causes something to fail.
I bought a 10 year old car. Financed it for 5 years. I had to trade it just after I made my last payment. I got a fair deal on my next car because I didn’t owe anything on it but I went from having a payment to having another payment. The next car I bought was 5 years old and I’ve had it for 10 years which means I’ve had no car payment for 5 years. I’ve been putting money aside by not having a car payment. Now I’m ready to buy another car. Not only do I have a trade with no balance to roll over, I have some money down as well. I can afford more car for the same payment. Food for thought.
Idk but all my (GM, Ford) cars started having issues at 10-12 yrs and needed about 2-4k in repairs. I sold and figured things would increase beyond then.
For the first 3-10 everything is under warranty so it’s likely the previous owner took care of things then. IMO things break early or they don’t.
Please tell me there are at least a couple people who, just for a second, thought he meant that you buy a car when you are 10 years old and then sell it when you turn 15
I only buy new and then keep it until it bites the dust 15 years from now, to me that’s the most cost effective way to do it
Most of my late teens/early 20’s I would buy a car for roughly $1000 and drive it for a year before selling it for roughly $1000 to buy another $1000 car. If I lost a few bucks that was fine, it was cheaper than having a monthly car payment.
Warren Buffet said buy at 7 years used. not saying your dad’s wrong, just a counterpoint. and Warren said that in the 80s, so…. different time, I guess
Cars of your dad’s days and cars today are different cars. The car manufacturers back then made cars that lasted as long as possible. Now manufacturers want you to trade in that car and get into a new one as soon as possible. So cars are far more disposable now than they once were. You used to hang on to the family car and give it to your oldest when they first started driving because it was still a very dependable car.
Also if you live in the rust belt or if the car spent time in the rust belt that rust can effect the frame of the car long before it mechanically fails. So be sure to check that as well!
It’s more cost-effective to purchase a 10-year-old vehicle and drive it until the wheels fall off (or the cost to repair it greatly exceeds the value of vehicle).
It is flat out incorrect. Age of a used car is relatively unimportant once the initial steep depreciation is done, usually around 3 or 4 years. What is crucially important is how the vehicle was driven, maintained, stored, and whether any accidents affected it. Using a specific example, I purchased a 2003 Buick Lesabre with 49,000 miles a year ago. It is in excellent mechanical condition and had been garaged by an elderly woman who drove it. It has been in no accidents. I have owned Lesabres with 3800 engine previously and know for certain they are reliable cars that usually are good for 250,000 miles if properly maintained. New cost of the vehicle was $25,000. I paid about 1/4 of that. Since purchase, I’ve driven 17,000 miles, put on new tires, changed the oil, air filter, and cabin filter. It is due for transmission service. I expect to still be driving this car 10 years from now with about 180,000 miles on it.