Let's look at your numbers. Say you bought two new Civics around 2003 for $28K total. Your maintenance & repairs should not be any higher for a new Civic than for any used car I can imagine. Let's assume gas is the same, and neglect transaction costs, finance costs, etc for now. So you have a difference over eighteen years for two cars of $16800 or $933/year. Per car, you saved $467/year or $39/month. Note we are also not considering that you could have kept the new cars on the road a few years longer. Also the insurance savings is minimal - figure you save $500/year for the first five years and then it's about the same when you go to liability only. That's another $139/year over 18 years or $12/month. Yeah, that's not nothing, but it's not the TONS OF MONEY that always gets mentioned in these discussions.
Your wife's repair and maintenance costs look more in line with average than yours. Does she put a lot more miles on her car than you put on yours? I do agree that if you put a lot fewer miles per year on a car than average, a used car starts looking like a much better deal (see below).
> That's another $139/year over 18 years or $12/month
> Yeah, that's not nothing, but it's not the TONS OF MONEY that always gets mentioned in these discussions.
It's not tons of money, but as you said, it's not nothing. Saving over $50/mo is definitely very significant for me (I must have grown up poor). As I do keep track of all my finances, I know that most of my savings come from saving $50/mo here and $50/mo there.
And I was poor for many of those years - I was a grad student.
A few other points:
You quoted 28K for 2 baseline Corollas/Civic. It's a bit more than that since the $14K is 2003 prices. I bought my second car in 2011. The lowest Civic was $16.6K then. And if you get the LX (which I did get, albeit an older model), it would be $18.5K
> Note we are also not considering that you could have kept the new cars on the road a few years longer.
The counterpoint is that with used cars, you can change them every 7 or so years and still be cheaper. This way you have more variety.
Finally, there is a bit of cherry picking: You used new Corollas and Civics as your benchmark. As someone who has owned both a 2003 Civic and a 2003 Accord, there's a world of a difference when it comes to comfort - I always needed extra back support in the Civic and it still caused back pain. I never needed it in an Accord.
With older cars, the price difference between a Civic and an Accord is $1.5K max (similar for Corolla vs Camry). So if you add $3K to my total, your equivalent would be about $10K new, as 2003 Camrys/Accords sold for $20K vs $15K. That's another $32/mo.
> Your wife's repair and maintenance costs look more in line with average than yours. Does she put a lot more miles on her car than you put on yours? I do agree that if you put a lot fewer miles per year on a car than average, a used car starts looking like a much better deal (see below).
I think it's just that newer cars are costlier to repair/maintain.
It's fine that you like spending money on cars and prefer to spend more for a larger, more comfortable car. You're not minimizing your costs by buying used - you're just avoiding spending even more money. Also remember, up front cost is not TCO. Let's look at Edmunds' numbers instead of ancecdotes: a five year old base Accord has a five year TCO of $29,110. A new base Corolla has a five year TCO of $25,679. There's your "over $50/month". Fifty bucks is fifty bucks right?
As for Edmund's TCO vs anecdotal data from my side: I can understand your viewing it that way, but of course, I'm not going to discard almost 15 years of personal data I've collected :-) I think one of the problems I've always had with the TCO is it simply has no numbers for my use case (buying older cars but with low miles).
The other problem is that whenever I look at the TCO numbers, they seem absurd. I just looked up the numbers for my wife's newer car, which was almost new when bought, and the Edmund's numbers are bordering on absurd. We had $3500 in maintenance + repairs over 4 years (and really it's $3000, as $500 was for an extra set of tires just for snow - not really a repair or maintenance). Edmunds estimate, for that vehicle, for the same span of years is $6200 - over double the reality. I've not had $6200 of repairs in a 4 year period even for my very old, used cars. We're not stingy on repairs and maintenance - we follow the recommended schedule. In fact, her car had two expensive repairs that are probably not common for her model, and I would think the amount we spent on it is above the norm.
And she drives her car more than 15K/year.
This is why for me, having actual, real data vs some weird aggregate from a web site is more meaningful. Edmunds may be good at the depreciation amount, but I question where they get the maintenance/repairs estimate.
Also, are you going by age or by model year? Understand that the TCO they give is for the next five years, as if you bought that model year used now.
You could just have a car whose repair costs vary a lot.
The problem with your data, given your use case, is that you can't really compare it to anything but more of your data. I'm sure if we could see how the sausage gets made there'd be plenty to criticize on Edmunds' TCO calculator but it at least provides a way to compare different new and used cars, and it breaks down the numbers in ways that allow you to work with them a little - or compare them to experience - if you are skeptical. It's also not too hard to do a similar model for comparision for different use cases (driving only 5k miles per year brings your TCO on a reliable older car way down, for example) - you'll have your own estimates for each line item instead of their data - if you want to compare against their numbers as a benchmark.
OK. Sorry. Your comment annoyed me enough to look up my actual expenses which I've been logging since late 2007, as opposed to hypotheticals.
Between then and now, I've spent $6247 on maintenance and repairs of my cars. Note this includes standard stuff like oil changes and tire replacements. That's about $480 a year. If I extrapolate and go back to when I bought the first car, the estimate would be $8649 since 2003.
How much did I pay for those two cars? $11200 total.
They were reliable. I did two cross country trips in them, without worrying a bit. I didn't rent cars for road trips.
So a total cost in the last 18 years of $19849. Had I bought new, and included standard maintenance[1], I surely would have paid a lot more. A new Camry in those days would already be over $20K. A Civic around $14K.
And of course, insurance on old cars is cheaper. You'd think it's the other way round, but it isn't.
Obligatory disclaimer: Research your used car models before you buy. If you don't, it will cost a lot more.
[1] As a reference, my wife's almost new car has cost $3500 in repairs/maintenance in only 4 years. Yes - even new cars can end up being costly to maintain in just a few years.