Spoken like someone who’s long since stopped worrying about having to commute without mass transit available.
If mass transit is available and reasonable then yeah, go off. But otherwise please stop blaming the victims of Capitalism.
sure, maybe. but FUCK Dave Ramsey.
I’m out of the loop. What’d they do?
He plays a daddy capitalist on teevee while being total boomer.
Also his debt pay off advice is bad financial advice. “Snow ball” method 🤡
Entire grift is dunking on peasants and blame their personal failings for systemic issues.
I pay about $450 a month for my mini cargo van and another $80-ish for insurance. I also drive about 3,000 miles a month (my commute is long and I spend most weekends out of town helping my parents), so I average about 350 dollars a month in gas. Let’s call it another 100 a month on average for maintenance (I do my own oil, the tires are pretty cheap, but there will be occasional large expenses).
So that comes out to pretty close to a thousand dollars a month total. That’s a lot of money.
But by living in the middle of the country far from work, I can rent a trailer home that costs about $1500/month less than a tiny apartment close enough to work to walk or bike, and I have the freedom of owning a car and being able to go anywhere and haul anything I need.
So yeah, it’s expensive, but it would be even more expensive NOT to have it.
The US sounds extremely expensive. In the EU 1500$ a month will pay for a very nice apartment close to work.
Or you can take the train, walk or bike. All of which are much much cheaper.
Unfortunately, it’s not too practical to bike 12 miles on the motorway.
lol how is this comment getting downvotes in this community
$2.50 for an all day bus pass in my area. Even taking it 5x a week is only $50/mo. And yet all of my peers refuse to use it and act disgusted when I tell them I prefer to take the bus, like it’s below them. I don’t get it.
insurance is whats insane nowadays. i was paying 600 a YEAR for full coverage on my truck until last year when they spiked it to 2100. dropped to just liability and that alone is 650 a year now
Millions? I don’t think so. There is no investment that would turn $30K or whatever into millions that was safe enough to work for the majority of people. But it would be a significant help.
That being said, for most people, the amount you’d spend to live in a place where a car isn’t needed or constantly paying for ride share or taxis greatly exceeds the amount you’d save by not having a car for the vast majority of people, and that’s not even getting into the ableism issue.
And sure we could get into buying a cheaper, used car or whatever, but in the long term the maintenance costs, having to buy another car sooner, and other financial risks to cars outside of warrantee over a lifetime will add up similarly unless you’re really lucky or can repair your own cars.
and that’s not even getting into the ableism issue.
Infrastructure that requires people to drive is far more ableist than the inverse. As many people with a disability can’t drive at all (or driving is a significant challenge).
The whole, where do you live thing is super important. The last time we moved my wife and I were very adamant about a specific maximum commute length in car, or a length by transit. And getting somewhere to live that was easy to commute from. We compared the price including mass transit commute at the max distance to anything we were getting closer with the commute included from there too.
The differences were absolutely significant. Many places were cheaper to live an hour away, even with car payments, insurance, and gas. That’s absolutely ridiculous and part of so many problems from climate change to motor vehicle deaths.
We need to enforce mixed development, the people who work in an area need to be able to afford living in that area. Pushing the workers out should not be acceptable.
$554 a month at 5% growth is $440k after 30 years. So yeah not millions.
Working life is more like 40 years. Those back end years are huge, it goes up to 840k. Which is why you’re supposed to start on your 401k right away. Of course 99% of people don’t get this talk until they’re 40; go through a poverty period after high school; or never make it out of paycheck to paycheck living for other reasons. (Like medical debt)
Very few people get the good pay, good contributions, and consequently the good retirement. We also completely lie to people about retirement. We tell them they have to scrimp and save so they aren’t homeless when they’re 80. In reality half of us will be dead by 75 and half again by 85.
S&P averaged about 10% over the last 30 years. That means it would be over 1.2 million.
And sure we could get into buying a cheaper, used car or whatever, but in the long term the maintenance costs, having to buy another car sooner, and other financial risks to cars outside of warrantee over a lifetime will add up similarly unless you’re really lucky or can repair your own cars.
Buying a low-mileage used car and even paying for a shop to do the maintenance is almost always cheaper than buying something with $500+ monthly payments. I don’t actually agree for the most part with Dave Ramsey (even about the entirety of this post)…but he’s correct that it is cheaper.
Most Americans have less than $1,000 in savings. So any car for that amount is not going to survive long. So most Americans still get loans for used cars.
And with interest rates so high, a payment of $550 will only get you about $25K. That’s enough for a decent new small sedan, but if you have kids (especially if 3 or more), that’s probably the minimum needed to get a used minivan that will last a while.
Anything else is only going to last a few years at best before needing major repairs.
I just did an autotrader search and in my (very unaffordable) area, there were lots of serviceable cars under 10k. If you live in a place with a garage you can even buy a used EV and eliminate whole categories of maintenance costs.
The whole point is to buy something that requires smaller or no monthly payments, and then bank the savings and eventually buy something better. “A couple of years” can do the trick in some cases.
That being said, for most people, the amount you’d spend to live in a place where a car isn’t needed or constantly paying for ride share or taxis greatly exceeds the amount you’d save by not having a car for the vast majority of people, and that’s not even getting into the ableism issue.
I disagree with everything else you say, as the other replies to you point out. But this is a really good point.
What commonly goes unsaid in these conversations of insurance cost is the immediate disputes that occur with the provider.
Why am I paying tens of thousands a year to engage in an argument when making a claim?
here’s me, a grown ass adult with a car i paid off like 4 years ago - nothing special, a smallish commuter POS that gets 40mpg that i literally use to drive 4 miles to work and back.
i was paying about $630/year because i pay for a year at a time, and it’d be almost double that to pay monthly, like what the actual fuck? anyways, a few months ago i get this email from the insurance company telling me “hey get ready your policy will renew in 3 months, be sure to double check your payment method” so i log into my account and they were gonna raise my premium to $970/yr and there was literally no obvious way to see that they were gonna do that. it was a case of logging in, going through multiple levels of menus to get to the future policy, download a pdf of that policy, then view it offline.
well, i’m pissed, so i call them to find out what the hell they’re doing and why and they claimed it’s because i had gotten a speeding ticket. of course, they had zero information to share with me about that speeding ticket - no ticket number, no date/time, no address, nothing. i sure as hell don’t recall getting a speeding ticket, and in any case, with a spotless driving record, you’d think there’d be some kind of interfacing with me about it, but no. they claimed the ticket was real and i’d need to contact my DMV to find out more.
so i call them, the DMV, and after some hassle, find out they have ZERO record of any speeding ticket. so… back on the phone with the insurance company and they just wanna give me the shaft and the runaround no exceptions. i mean, i’m pissed now because it’s OBVIOUS fraud, right? Anyways, i get absolutely nowhere. so i tell them to cancel my policy and i woulda thought about contacting a lawyer about a possible case or something but, naw…
i still have the car, and it’s parked being unused. I swapped to riding bikes to and from work, sometimes an ebike, sometimes a fixie, and i’m the only cyclist on the road around here that I’ve ever seen and it’s sometimes really sketchy. but i plan to ride through the winter, dry or snowy, i don’t care.
it can get complicated, because i’m a single father, but honestly, fuck auto insurance, fuck cars, fuck car brain. we gotta make a stand at some point and I lament that we can’t really do it collectively.
I’ve had great luck going through an insurance broker for my insurance. The broker can be a mediator should the insurance company engage in sketchy nonsense, and can get you into some cushy insurance companies than only do B2B and don’t spend millions on consumer advertising. Plus brokers will know what insurance companies to go through for what buyers to likely get you the best rate
I was once rear ended at a red light. I was knocked unconscious and the driver drove off. A few kind witnesses called police who took a report. They got half his plate imprinted on my bumper, but never tracked him down. I had State Farm, and I was even paying extra for the “uninsured driver coverage”. They said they couldn’t cover it because until they had another driver’s information I was automatically at fault, even with the police report and witness accounts. They said it didn’t count as uninsured driver because it’s possible the guy had insurance. I was flabbergasted.
In the end I had a concussion and needed to take time off work for recovery and my short term disability insurance ended up suing State Farm because they didn’t want to pay for my medical treatment. State Farm agreed to cover medical care but only if it was recorded as my fault and I paid my deductible. In anger I tried to switch insurance companies but found out they have a shared database and since it was recorded as a hit and run my fault, nobody else would take me. And State Farm jacked my rate up 30%…
I realised in a similar, though less detrimental, encounter that true insurance comes in the form of dash cameras. For the equivalent of an insurance payment or two, a high fidelity video of the entire vehicle surroundings can be had.
Honestly though, with a few witnesses and half a plate, it’s a surprise they couldn’t find the car that drove into you. Decerning the colour, and style of car, surely it’d be only a handful of vehicles matching both the description and the numbers.
I’m sorry that happened to you.
That would require a cop to do more than the bate minimum, so its just not gonna happen.
Do you have any recommendations for dash camera solutions like you mention? I’ve been telling myself I need to get a dash cam but every time I start researching what to buy I feel like the market is a sea of wanky information and it’s hard to tell what is crap and what is solid.
Commenting here so i can check replies, as i also need recommendations.
You are not kidding!
I got a motorcycle and paid for insurance. When someone stole my bike and police caught the guy and put it in the impound, my scummy ass insurance called me to go see if it’s okay? Like bro, that’s your job.
Then they said if I was willing to sign a contract that the bike was fine without allowing me to see it. I said no.
Finally they gave up and wrote me a check for the cost of the bike.
Goes to show how strange modern life is that it was easier for them to cut a cheque than send someone down there. Happens all the time unfortunately. I wonder if someone at the impound lot rode it home.
Not a motorcycle, but my car was hit (along with several others) by a guy evading the police. I wasn’t even in it, we were in a city and cars were parked along the street, and he came over a hill, ran a red light, t-boned someone, and then bounced against a bunch of cars down the street.
When I got the police report, I filed a claim with my insurance, which was the same insurance company as the criminal. They originally told me that, “There were 7 vehicles involved in this accident, and other vehicles were damaged much worse than yours, so we’re not sure if his policy will cover all of the damage… So we’ll have to file the claim under your policy, you’d just have to pay your deductible.”
Absolutely not, I told her. “Well Sir, you have to unders-”
“No, ma’am, YOU need to understand that your customer’s inability to be a responsible citizen is NOT my problem, and I am NOT having my premiums go up, or paying my deductible, when I did absolutely nothing wrong.” After escalating to a manager and giving her an earful while threatening to drop my policy with them effective immediately, they miraculously realized his policy would cover the damage to my car. Easy day, right?
Now, I’ll be honest: The damage to my car was completely cosmetic, but I was poor and could have really used some extra cash, hence why I was pursuing it. Well, brought the car in to be looked over by the insurance folks, and the assessed damage was like $800. Cool, I asked her for my check so I could go home.
“Oh, well, Sir, you still have a lien on the vehicle, and normally we would send it to your bank, and they would tell you where to go and then pay the repair shop.”
Oh, cool, well, that’s not what we’re doing, I already have a shop lined up, I said, but needed the money for the parts.
Big tall dude comes over, also an insurance employee, as the woman and I are going back and forth, and he chimes in and goes, “Well, Sir, y’know, typically the bank holding the lien wants to handle these things, and, y’know, if the repairs aren’t made and they repossess the vehicle, you could owe the repair costs.”
My response: “Huh, fascinating. Sounds like a conversation between my bank and I, and with all due respect, I don’t understand who you are to have that discussion on their behalf.”
“Just cut him the check,” as he walks away.
I fucking hate insurance companies.
Dave Ramsey is a hack.
Is he the idiot who demands you only pay for things in cash and store it in labeled envelopes?
Dave Ramsey has excellent financial advice for a certain type of person. I bet 90% of people reading this need Dave Ramsey style advice.
broken clock tho
That’s…the point of the saying.
He’s right for most people first beginning to improve their financial health. He has probably gotten more people out of debt than any other ‘guru’. If that’s a hack, so be it, it works.
All you need to know about Dave Ramsey: i worked on his Jaguar XK.
Is that a particularly expensive jaguar? When I was car shopping I saw some jags for 20k or less so owning a Jag means absolutely nothing when it comes to wealth.
Nah he’s alright. There is no nuance in his advice but for the majority of his listeners that’s probably a good thing.
Yeah he has some shit personally takes and I hate the way he runs his company. He does give pretty decent financial advice though
I can give better advice in a similarly easy to consume manner, applicable to most.
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Invest in a low cost target date fund. Look at Vanguard target date funds for examples and pick a year close to your expected retirement date.
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Pay your highest interest debt before lower.
Both of these pieces of advice make you more money than doing what Ramsay says and are equally easy to understand.
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Assuming you begin investing at the age of 20 and invest $554 per month for 45 years at a 6% growth rate, you would yield 1.4 million. Definitely not MILLIONS.
6% is very conservative though. Even at 7%, which is a widely accepted inflation adjusted number, it’s over 2 mil.
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And then you add the inflation and you actually just owe money. Got to get that third job at 65
Inflation historically has been 1 to 4 %.
I care about what kind of car i drive and all of mine are broken because they’re old garbage.
In this land of legalised extortion in the form of insurance my friend who is in his mid 30s and been driving over a decade with no claims has to pay £700 per month.
My mum wanted to add my sister (again mid thirties and driving for nearly 20 years now with no claims) to her policy so she could borrow her car for a week and then maybe use the car once a month if that and they wanted an additional £1000 a month for the privaledge.
Fucking scum.
You can shop around for insurance, you don’t have to just take what they give you.
Car insurance is expensive because cars are both risky and highly destructive. Hence, making a market for them involves high prices.
Regardless of what you think of insurance companies, there’s just no way around this - you could nationalize car insurance and it would still either be really expensive, either on the policy level or else born by taxes.
Certainly not. I just put in some data in an insurance broker thingy and I would be able to get insurance for approx. 120€/month with partially comprehensive coverage (including obligatory liability insurance). These outrageous prices are definitely a US thing.
I’m not trying to argue against the fact that they are both risky and highly destructive, it is definitely necessary. My issue is more with the way that it works in the UK. I think the system in somewhere like Australia is a lot fairer and isnt inherently designed to bleed people of the maximum amount of money like it is in the UK.
Stop throating the boot of exploitive companies.
They’re not, they’re complaining about the problems inherent to cars.
Which is ignoring the problems inherant to auto insurance, which is fundamentally a greater force in the price/cost of car insurance than the danger of cars.
Yes, cars can be dangerous, but that’s not why car insurance is expensive, it’s expensive because car insurance companies have a completely captive market in the US- one that must pay whatever the insurance comapny dictates.
As a result, they set the price as high as they can get away with, and then refuse to actually pay it out anyway.
Don’t make excuses for the insurance companies. The risk is the whole point, and certainly does not excuse their gouging.
You’ll notice other countries do not, in fact, have to deal with this level of price gouging, which implies it’s nothing to do with the cars themselves- it’s just the insurance companies, and it always has been.
The risk is the whole point, and certainly does not excuse their gouging.
The risk is the point though. High risk activities will cost more to insure because they’ll need to be paid out more often. Couple that with the high destruction possible, and you have frequent accidents that can all cause very expensive damage, necessitating a high base price for insurance.
The price gouging is just capitalism, and I doubt anyone here is going to argue that capitalism isn’t bad.
Per month?! Wtf are you driving? (Late 40s here, paying around £400 per year for my electric mini insurance)
My bad, i wrote per month but i meant per year, that was my mistake. He is driving a 1.4 turbo new shape VW Scirocco (sp). My mothers car is a 1.3 Citroen C3 so hardly expensive, luxury or even quick cars. Even £400 is disgustingly over priced in my opinion though, the way this country does insurance is vile.
Australia’s system of buying registration which then covers your basic insurance (third party cover) which is like a tax and insurance cost combined for the car is much more logical, then if you want to you can buy additional fully comp cover for the car none of this insuring per driver per car bullshit.
Now if there were a /c/fuckinsurance - I’d be all over that. I love my cars, I HATE insurance companies.
I love that I only have liability at $100k but my cost still goes up every year. My coverage is actually worth less to inflation and those crooks want more money? For what?
Go with a different company.
yeah of fucking course. you guys are forced to buy insurance in the US, they have a big juicy captive market.
There’s tons of car insurance companies. We can shop around. Most people don’t, for some reason.
Oh come on, Lemmy. I know I’m on c/fuckcars; but seriously - $600 a month for a new car sounds really good to me, I’m from Eastern Europe.
It’s good because new cars are significantly more reliable, fuel efficient, safe and comfortable than 10+ year old cars. If you drive a lot and can’t afford to pay $15k up front for a decent ~6yo car, then it’s really not that bad. Much better than buying $600 rolling wreckage, I can tell you that much.
Yes people, I know you only use bikes and trains and whatnot. But some people neee cars, and you have to respect that. Or are you gonna tell this mother of 2, living in a village, working from office 20km from home, that she would be better off just sticking to the public transport which visits her place once every 2 hours.
I don’t get your comment. You can have a decent car new at 400€/month and I still think that’s ridiculously high.
Used cars make so much more sense when you value rational arguments. (Or bikes, public transportation, feet).
This is for insurance, not the cost of buying the car. Yes some people do need cars because of their situation and the majority of people here can recognise that but to pay so much just for fucking insurance!
Oh, that’s odd, I don’t get it. It says average car payment per month, I thought it means it’s the monthly loan payment, which is super fine.
$550 is about what I pay ANNUALLY for AC for my 2015 Mondeo.
But yeah, it would be close to $3000 annually if I wanted to lease any new vehicle.
Ah OK, I see what you mean. I thought you were referencing the title of the post as it mentions that his neighbour is paying x amount per month for insurance but you are right the image accompanying the post does say average car payment which would referring to paying for the actual car.
We were both concentrating on different parts of the post! You were right if referring to the image text, sorry.
This is what I love about Lemmy. People being able to realise they made a mistake.
If this is just insurance then it is straight up wrong. The national average is like $200/m.
As I said in another reply I wasn’t mistaken and referring to the post title which was talking about insurance where as the image itself was referring to “car repayments”. That was my mistake.
some people care DEEPLY about what kind of car everyone drives. that’s literally why overpriced cars even exist
Works both ways too, Sam Bankman Fried apparently fooled a lot of people by cosplaying as a Toyota Corolla driver
i prefer a well maintained shitbox 😎
As a bike rider, doesn’t that skew even more the relative advantage you get by not giving a fuck? If nobody wants a “weak” car, they should be even cheaper than in a sane market that values cars by their ability to go fast and accurately from A to B, no?
Eh, it also means relatively fewer weak cars are being built. So it helps, but not as much as you’d think.
No, because they pay out the nose for huge SUVs these days which increases the chance they’ll kill us cyclists.
No I meant coming from ignorance, since I am a biker, but on the matter of buying “ugly” cars.
I think more-so, some people think everyone else gives a shit about what they drive.
If you drive a Nissan, I’m not going anywhere near you on the road.
Uhhh… I pay less than that per YEAR for insurance on two motorcycles. Fuck cars, indeed.
A decent 7 year old car with 100k miles on it currently goes for about $15k. Everything private sale is a lemon, completely used up with over 200k miles, or 20+ years old. All still asking thousands more than they’re worth.
Every used car I’ve ever owned cost thousands in repairs that were unexpected. Head gaskets, alternators, O2 sensors, intake manifolds, ignition coils, brake calipers, radiators, every fucking time. It’s cheaper to just get a five year loan on a 2 year old car around $20k than to fuck with anything used.
That’s really close to a Camry hybrid too, then you get a warranty plus residual value is going to be very high.
Thats what I just did. Got a former lease, certified pre owned (so some semblance of a warranty) and half the price of new. Things got every option and even self drives on the highway
Same here. Certified pre-owned brings (or at least brought) price down for luxury cars down to about the same as the cheapest barebones brand new car for me. Less than a year till my car is paid off now.
Don’t like needing a car but if I’m going to have one I will damn well be comfortable and not sore from driving to/from work.
A 2 year old car is used. It’s like c/fuckcars just turns peoples brains off when discussing vehicles.
I think context gives away the intent of the message. My previous 20-year-old car cost $6,000 in repairs and the check engine light was still on. My 2022 car just works.
You can just admit you used the wrong word to express your point.
