> A "six figure salary" today is nothing like what it was when that term was coined.

Exhibit A is whenever a story about public employees makes the front page of HN (for example, the Detroit bankruptcy or the BART strike) and people start freaking out about train operators making $100K: "They don't even have college degrees, for godsakes!"

Well there's the thing: $100k salaries are most commonly made in portions of the world where lots of people make $100k salaries, thus merely increasing locational inequality while not actually pushing up the quality of life for the highly skilled workers commensurately with the income.

What I've seen in my friends is that certain men will buy an expensive car on a loan, keep it 3-4 years and then swap it for a family friendly car when they have kids. Often they will buy the car 2nd hand.

The car retains the majority of its value, they enjoy the car, they're not actually spending massive amounts of money like you seem to think they are. It's essentially a hobby item that they enjoy driving.

And it's only a proportion of my friends, some just get other cars that are a lot cheaper to run.

Not only that but leasing an expensive car can actually cost you less than the value of the car you lose for using it.

I remember checking how leasing a Porsche for 3 years would cost me less than half of the value the car would lose in that time.

I agree with kayoone; it doesn't really seem like this could consistently be true or else it would just be bad business.

In general, though, the best way to combat the depreciation of a car's value is to take out a long-term 0% interest loan, provided of course that you can get it. This works because (1) inflation reduces your effective net expenditure on the car; (2) you can take the cash you would have spent on the car and invest it instead; if you even conservatively get 3% returns a year, you've still come out far ahead.

Regarding (2), if you can't afford the car in cash, then you can't afford the car. That's always been my motto. Financing is a choice; it should never be something you are forced to do, unless this is your first car straight out of school and you just have no money yet.

If that was always the case, leasing agencies wouldnt be able to make profit, so you might just have stumpled on some really good offers which popup from time to time. In general, leasing costs hould be equal to or more than the deprecation in value of the car itself.