this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2024
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Considering the ridiculous loan terms I’ve seen, I’m surprised that this hasn’t happened sooner. The cars can’t possibly be worth that much money.
Unfortunately when you need transport, it more often than not becomes worth whatever the price they charge is. A lot of unfortunate people fall into awful loans because they lack viable transport options otherwise. Rto hasn't helped at all either.
Agreed. I wish people in general were more confident in repairing their cars, because that's a great way to put off a big purchase. However, I just mentioned to a coworker a repair I did (which saved me like $800-1000), and they were shocked and didn't understand how I could do it (basically ripped apart the dash and sent the odometer chip to a repair place; if I didn't suck at soldering, I could've saved another $70 or so).
But most aren't, or they don't have space to do it even if they had that confidence. And the result is getting sucked into paying 10% interest over a 7-year term in 2020/2021 because your car broke down at just the wrong time and parts aren't generally available.
However, the silver lining is that the more people that default, the better the used car market will get, so there will be more options for people who can't afford new cars. So I think it'll even itself out, it just might take a year or two to stabilize. I'm in the market for a car, and honestly, the options suck. The cars I want are out of stock, and the cars that are readily available are available for a reason. I've never financed a car (newest car I bought was 8 years old), but it's looking like that's the best option right now. So, I'm holding off and just maintaining our aging cars (both >15yo), but that's not a realistic option for a lot of people.