daryllh:I can't picture Ron ever owning a new(er) car. Don't know why.
I can't either unless I get a really good deal on it. Cars are a lousy investment. If you buy a $30k car, it loses 30% right off the showroom floor, so now it's worth $21,000. Drive it the average of 12k miles a year for 2-3 years, (24k-36k in miles), and now you take the 2nd biggest hit in value, so now that $30k turned 21k car is now going to sell for 15k-18k and in basically 2-3 years time, the 30k car lost 50% of its value.
My current car is from 1996, has 58k original miles on it, runs like a top and I paid $3,500 cash for it. Works for me. I'll try it for probably 5-10 years, then I'll buy something else.
Yeah, I may not be driving a brand new or even a newer car, but then I don't have the expense of it either. As for "keeping up with the Jones", who the fuck are they anyway? Unless they are buying me a car, fuck 'em. .....and I certainly don't need to buy something for status/to impress people. You know what they say about status... you buy shit you don't need, so you can impress people you don't give a fuck about anyway. Now to me, that's fucking insanity.