Now adjust for frustration of sudden issues of an old car. Adjust for the fact that your car is not an average - pretty high probability of getting a piece of shit repaired by electric tape and bubble gum.
The main problem with used Hondas is that their reliability is priced in so they cost more than other brands' used cars. Though this helps you a bit when you try to sell, balancing it out somewhat.
Everyone keeps saying this, but when I ask, no one answers:
How much should I adjust for sudden issues?
I once got stuck in the middle of a national park because my starter malfunctioned. People might have laughed at me for buying a used car. But let me ask you: I'll give you two choices:
1. For free, I'll give you a special insurance. If you are ever inconvenienced in a fairly populated national park, I'll pay you $5000. Heck, I'll sweeten the deal - I'll pay you $5000 if you're inconvenienced anywhere because of your car. Heck, I'll sweeten it further. I'll pay you $5000 even if you are never inconvenienced due to the car!
2. You get to not be inconvenienced. This option will give you no money, though.
Which would you take? Note that in reality, my special insurance can be worth a lot more than $5000.
I imagine some people may not take your "insurance" deal with a 50% chance of breaking down versus no insurance deal with a 5% chance of breaking down.
Folks probably put a large price tag on the time and trouble they'd have to spend waiting for help, getting towed, and dealing with the repair, plus the opportunity cost of losing that time and interrupting or missing outright whatever they were on their way to.
There's also the consideration that a small fraction of break-downs may be dangerous (either high speed loss of control, which I'm sure is rare, or even standing at the side of a highway, which I bet is much less rare but also dangerous). What value do you put on that?
Not some - many. It's just that few are willing to put an actual number they would pay for that insurance - especially given how under other circumstances, most of them do their best to get the cheapest insurance. On this one type of insurance, they think differently. Perhaps this is a clue that they are not viewing it as insurance.
>Folks probably put a large price tag on the time and trouble they'd have to spend waiting for help, getting towed, and dealing with the repair, plus the opportunity cost of losing that time and interrupting or missing outright whatever they were on their way to.
Yes, this is how they rationalize it, but always careful to avoid putting a number on it. My $5000 is a low estimate. Realistically, think $10K. For less than a fifth of that, you can have a great vacation for two for a week. You're ruining the experience of one vacation so you can have 5 or more of them. (This particular trip cost me less than $200, so it can be a lot more than just 5 vacations). But instead, people prefer to have fewer such vacations in order to not have a breakdown.
For that one experience that you're worried about being ruined, I could have had (and may actually have had) many that you did not take due to lack of money.
>There's also the consideration that a small fraction of break-downs may be dangerous (either high speed loss of control, which I'm sure is rare, or even standing at the side of a highway, which I bet is much less rare but also dangerous). What value do you put on that?
I'll invert the question back to you, or to whoever is using that argument to justify a much newer car. How low a probability of it occurring would make it not be a consideration for you? If this happens to 0.1% of people who buy used cars, I don't even consider it as a factor. If it happens to 20%, it's definitely a consideration. And I'd compare it with the likelihood of other ways of dying.
My point is people will come up with these rationalizations (a fancy word for excuses) without really thinking about them. Very often, people just want a shinier car and use these reasons. Or they're scared to admit how much they'd pay for their insecurities, so they exaggerate the costs (be it in Dollars or in human life) of a used car.
Don't get me wrong. One of my cars is a very expensive 2 year old car, which I got primarily for safety reasons. So I am aware of both sides. But I'm not going to try to tell anyone that getting a safer car can, in any way, be a wise decision purely from a financial standpoint.
Why assume it is them being dodgy? Perhaps it is really hard to put a number on it.
What number would make me risk my life on a low-shoulder highway in the middle of the night with my son in the back seat? I have no idea, but I can tell you it is not in the ballpark you are discussing.
> purely from a financial standpoint
Maybe you've never suffered significant financial loss due to a breakdown, but can you guarantee no one ever will?
And there's more to it than finances, obviously...
>What number would make me risk my life on a low-shoulder highway in the middle of the night with my son in the back seat? I have no idea, but I can tell you it is not in the ballpark you are discussing.
As you say, you yourself do not know your tolerance threshold (and that's OK). So it's futile to use it in decision making unless you do put a number on it.
As for the difficulty of putting a number on it - I don't know, as I have not tried. But do you think you could find out if you're willing to pay $1000? Just because you can't put a number on it doesn't mean you have to pay $10K more. There are intermediate options.
>Maybe you've never suffered significant financial loss due to a breakdown, but can you guarantee no one ever will?
I know people who have paid a lot of money due to cheap cars dying much earlier than expected. Looking a those in isolation, the cheap car was more expensive than the newer car.
But that's all part of the insurance mindset, which is to think in terms of probabilities. If I buy a cheap used car from a reliable brand every 7-8 years, do I expect all of them to end up being disasters? No. Do I expect none of them to be disasters? No. I expect I probably will end up with a bad car from a financial standpoint one day. But the amount I'll save over all those other cars that turned out fine will more than compensate. I won't get upset - it's all part of the strategy.
I think what I'm trying to get at is everyone points to the person who bought a cheap used car that ended up dying within a year or two and point at how wasteful that was. Yet few people point to those who buy much newer cars and talk about how bad that decision was. Purely from a financial standpoint, both are bad decisions. Yet society tends to think only one of them is.
>And there's more to it than finances, obviously...
Sure, there's peace of mind and comfort. And if you're open about it, that's fine. I often see people justifying it as being cheaper or "almost the same as used car when you factor in repairs". I think my goal in this thread is to highlight that if you do your research, that statement is just not true.
>What number would make me risk my life on a low-shoulder highway in the middle of the night with my son in the back seat? I have no idea, but I can tell you it is not in the ballpark you are discussing.
I should add: While you don't know the number, it's not as nebulous as you may think. If you paid $10K more to get a newer car that you think is safer, we know it's at least $10K.
If I offered you a car that costs $40K more than your current one and convinced you that your son will have a 50% lower chance of injury/death than your current car. Will you pay for it? What about $100K?
Let's not kid ourselves. Everyone has a number. It may be hard to tighten the bound, but it does exist. There will be a price point where for a 50% reduction you'll say "You know what? I'll take the risk". Or even "You know what, I think the risk is low enough as it is in my car - a 50% reduction of a tiny number is not much of a gain"
I do hope you will never respond with the latter, because you have no idea what that number is. Or at least realize that if you rationalize that way, so do people who buy cheap cars. They likely think the probability of serious injury/death for their son is not much different from a newer car.
What types of breakdowns happen unexpectedly while driving outside of tires going flat, without any warning and people ignoring the obvious signs and getting the cars fixed once they see the light or hear strange noises?
The car breakdowns I've had requiring a tow usually involve the car not starting at all.