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Long ago I read a story, which I can’t source now so it may be apocryphal, about author CS Lewis. As the story goes, after the Narnia series got popular, he made enough money to buy himself a very nice Jaguar. The first thing he did was to take a hammer to the car and dent it all over. His thinking was, if he did that himself, he would avoid the inevitable pain from every time someone slammed their door into his, or tapped the bumper in a parking lot.

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Some great advice for all of those fresh tech millionaires out there is that you should always buy a car at least an order of magnitude below what you can afford, for exactly that reason.

That's probably good advice for anyone: don't stretch yourself financially, especially on depreciating assets.

I still use the one pay check rule for cars. If it costs more than I make in one pay check, then I can't afford it. It has been a good incentive to get better pay checks. :-)

I buy second hand cars with some visible damage for a similar reason. They tend to be cheaper and we're not that bothered about any scrape & dents our family adds.

Obviously you've got to check that the minor damage doesn't reflect more severe damage you can't see, but that's the same for any second hand car and a good inspection should reveal that.

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