Personal Consumer Issues • which used car to buy?

The two vans I am looking at are the same model and equipment.
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Any reason not to go with the newer one for a little more money?

Be sure to check the specifications carefully since a lot of the new advanced safety features were starting to be introduced somewhere around 2017 to 2019 so they may have different safety features.

There might be other differences like the 2017 might have a CD player and the 2019 may have better connectivity with your cell phone.

Be sure to also check the condition of the tires since one may need new tires a lot sooner than the other.

A new 2024 or 2025 should have a lot better safety features. It might also get better gas milage.

a new van like I'm looking at is 40,000 new. When does it make sense to buy the new one and finance 30,000 of it?

I would assume that you might expect a Caravan to last 150k miles (maybe more if you are lucky) but come up with your own estimate.

With a $40K new one that you drive 20k miles a year it would take 7.5 years to drive 150K miles. That would cost $5,333($40K/7.5) in depreciation a year.

The 2019 with 55k miles would last another 95k miles so if you are driving 20k miles a year it would last 4.75 years which would cost $4,100 ($19.5k/4.75) in depreciation.

That is about $1,200 a year less or about $100 a month.

The is simplistic since with the used car you will have higher maintenance costs, interest on the car loan, need tires sooner, less safety features etc. With the used car there is also a chance that is some problem which you do not know about. If you can do most car repairs yourself that would help make the use car more affordable .

Those numbers are made up so you would want to figure out which numbers to use but when you look at the monthly cost of depreciation the used car is not dramatically less expensive unless you are confident that you will drive it a lot more than 150k miles.

which used car to buy?

With your wife driving 20k miles a year my gut reaction is that "None of the above" is the right answer and that you should look at other cars which get better gas mileage and might be more likely to last longer than a Caravan.

Statistics: Posted by Watty — Sat Sep 14, 2024 10:18 pm — Replies 5 — Views 354

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