this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2025
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For the vast majority of people the only debt they should ever get is a house.
The average person does not have to financial means to pay for a car or school without loans.
A car is absolutely doable without financing l. It's a poverty trap to finance a car. What you can't do is have a brand new car.
it's fine to finance a car you can afford. it may even be benefincial. i can take aout a 20K loan at a near 0 apr, i can take that 20K and invest it and get a return on it. which is better than dumping it all at once into a depreciating asset.
the problem is that people fiance cars they can't afford. like 50K gas guzzlers with massive maintenance bills
Having 20k plus the cash flow to pay a 20k loan is a totally different scenario than buying a car for cash. If you need that 20k to pay the 333/month, it's stupid to trust the market isn't going to go down, and simple savings would net you maybe $500.
the market hasnt' gone down in like 15 years dude. the government will prop it up if it does go down.
It's gone down moth over month many times though. If you are dependant on that principle month to month it's insane to trust the market.
all that matters is the value when you cash out. if you are sitting there agonizing about an assets value month to month you're doing it wrong.
just because you are irrational and don't know how to invest, doesn't mean the rest of us don't. i have a handful of stocks and such, i have no clue what their value is because i check it like once a year. in the 5 years it's been invested my money has doubled.
Investing is great for retirement funds, over the 30 years or so it's great for returns. It's terrible to invest principle you need in scope of months or 1-2 years even.
If you have 20k and a 20k loan, putting that money in the stock market is stupid if you need that money to pay the loan. If you have 20k, a 20k loan, and income to cover loan payments in addition to living, it may be beneficial to invest that 20k, but it's still relatively high risk.
cool. keep telling me how stupid I am. I have seen that 20K become 45K over the past 5 years.
guess i should have just dumped it into a car 5 years ago instead of doubling it. gosh, what a total a moron i am!
When I was car shopping at the end of 2024, I quickly realized the best bang for the buck was around $10-12k because at that price you could get a low-mid range vehicle that was around 6 years old with around 100k miles. Obviously some vehicles in that price range would be older with fewer miles, some would be newer with more miles, but that seemed to be about the price range where you'd get a vehicle which you could reasonably expect to be mechanically sound for at least another 2-3 years. Less than that and you got into vehicles that were far more worn either by age or by mileage, so you'd be trading upfront payment for additional maintenance costs.
$10k is a lot of money to save up. That's about my entire emergency fund right now. That's almost 3 years of socking away $300 a month, or 2 years at $500 a month. Simply put vehicle ownership is horrendously expensive especially for folks making close to minimum wage
you can't afford a car if you only saved up 10K over 3 years.
Ideally yes, but on top of your normal expenses socking away $800/mo is a ton, especially since we're almost certainly talking about a young adult, fairly freshly on their own who's probably only making around 30-40k per year. When each paycheck is under a thousand dollars every couple of weeks that money disappears fast especially with the financial discipline one can realistically expect of a young adult
I don't think I was super human and I had zero issues saving $1200/mo on a 2.2k/mo salary.
but i lived with multiple roommates, ate cheap food, and didn't party.
Hey that's honestly super awesome. Most folks don't have that kind of financial discipline when they're young.
When I was first on my own I was just proud that I was a able to pay extra on my possibly-illegal car loan that I got from a place that was shut down a couple of years later for credit fraud
Most folks I know who were bad with money... had rich parents. So it didn't matter really if they had any discipline or not. They were going ot get bailed out either way, and did, repeatedly.
I can't speak to what goes on in other people's heads. But a lot of people rationalize totally distorted beliefs about money and I can't say I agree that taking on 100K of debt makes any sense if you don't have a clear plan on how to become employed and earn a salary as such to pay that back. Life is about choices and consequences... and for some reason on lemmy people feel like those things should be totally disconnected. The concept of everyone 'pursuing their dreams' doesn't really work in reality because both education and jobs are limited resources over which we compete.
There are also so many alternatives. I just walked my nephew through college application process. He could have gone to a few schools for free, but he decided those schools were 'below' him and he would rather take on debt to go to fancier schools out of pride and arrogance. That's his choice, and I hope it works out for him, but in 5 years if he is crying poor w/ 100K of debt in a 50K job and living outside his means, I am not going bail him out of his own mistake. I knew plenty of people that went to 'lesser' schools for free, and those who went to expensive schools with zero aid and f'ed themselves for life'. The former are a lot happier and chiller than the latter.
But you know what, if my nephew suddenly has cancer or a car accident and has to drop out and has 50K of debt from his choice, I'd probably feel pretty bad for him and help him out. Sometimes shit does happen that is beyond your control.
I'm vacationing with my upper-middle class sibling. They rented a car for the week ... for $970! for one week! It takes me months to save up that much money! And they do this every year!
The wealth gap is rapidly increasing.
that's cheap. how much did you think it should cost?
it might have been way cheaper if she didn't get insurance. that usually adds 30-40% to the cost
Car rentals are so expensive nowadays. Enough so that I've never done it in my adult life. Its always expensive enough that it makes some alternative make way more sense, whether that's driving our own vehicle somewhere or just winging it with public transit
This is why we drive when we go on our yearly trip back to the east coast to visit family. Flying would cost the same once you factor in a hotel stop midway, and would save 8+ hours if we were actually able to drive without stopping, but no one we visit lives near an airport and transportation to/from the airport adds a ton of cost.
It used to be, but these days the average person can barely afford groceries without a loan.
Same with phones. Buy a second-hand flagship from a couple of years ago (eg pixel 8), and use a pre-paid plan.
It's not just a few hundred dollars saved on the phone, it's also a few hundred per year on less overpriced contracts.
Prepaid plans have to be more competitively priced because you can switch at will.
I buy all my phones off eBay from reputable resellers. There are plenty that make a living at refurbishing phones, rate each one on a scale, post pics of the phone you will receive. I pay around $120 for mine, $180 if it's a bangin' deal and I really want that unit.
https://caredge.com/guides/used-car-price-trends-for-2025
https://moneyzine.com/personal-finance/savings-statistics/
... that's as of 2022.
Its worse now, considerably.
But, even assuming 2022 savings levels... that's half the population that would need their savings to multiply by at least a factor of ~x42.5, to be able to afford the average used car, without financing.
... You are wildly, incredibly out of touch.
Sure, yes, its technically possible, technically doable, in approximately the same way that it's technically possible and doable that I could become a millionaire by the end of 2026.
Yep, its a poverty trap to finance a car.
Correct.
... and that is the only viable choice for people in car centric, car dependent American, people who don't have thousands to tens of thousands of dollars in savings, which is the vast majority of people.
In conclusion: America is a poverty trap.
... Metric had a song about this, what, nearly two decades ago?
https://youtube.com/watch?v=fYbrb2YYqdo
The average cost of a car is wildly skewed by luxury models and the absurd prices of new cars. The market has gotten more expensive, so it is more difficult to find reliable cars in the sub 5k range, but under 10k is possible. It's possible to save a few hundred bucks a month and get progressively better cars without financing them, because depreciation isn't significant at the low end of the market.
Yep. And?
Its also reality.
Most used cars on the market are luxury cars that are 5 years or less old... because car companiea just largely stopped making non luxury cars.
This is what the used car market looks like right now, I don't care that its abnormal, I care about trying to evaluate you statement ... in reality, as it currently exists.
This is the idea you're not getting:
No.
Its not.
Not for half the population.
Pay is too low, costs of living are too high.
People largely cannot actually save a few hundred bucks a month, all that goes towards existing debt payments and increasing rent utilities and food costs... and fucking health insurance.
You don't understand how many people were operating on razor thin margins, and now, huge numbers of people are running net negative, getting stuck in some new poverty debt trap, maybe this time its chaining loans to keep buying groceries.
Your evaluation of what is possible is again, yes, technically possible, for a very small amount of people... but generally... it is laughably and wildly insufficient, useless to the vast majority of people it is potentially relevant to, because of how much the overall situation has changed, because of how out of touch you are with the basic parameters of the situation.
The US is a society where car ownership is mandatory to participate in society... and at least half of society cannot actually afford that expense, financed or not.
We need a systemic solution, otherwise, we will experience a systemic collapse.
How to skip steps 2-4?
Pay cash for a car that runs. You aren't getting a loan without income in the first place.
Oh, ok then.
I'm 18, just outta high school, have no money, no friends or family willing to cosign a car, public transit sucks where I live.
How do I get a job?
Or car?
Which one do I get first, when they each require the other?
You get a bike and hate life for a few years.
Around me a 2 hour bike ride one way is not abnormal for a commute. Across freeways and up mountains. It's extremely not bike friendly here.
That is what I have done, I don't like that debt either and some cunt at the bank getting 2/3rds of my housing expenses is only slightly better than a wanker of a landlord getting all of it.