I had a college econ professor explain that the best way to save money on a car is not to buy used (everyone's first guess). It's to drive it until "the wheels fall off." Depreciation is the biggest cost of car ownership and it stops at a certain point in a car's life. If the car is maintained well, several hundred thousand miles is even doable. I took that advice to heart.
You're still eating a good amount of it at two years. Five is where the curve flattens out. The objectively best used car to buy is a single owner 5 year old Toyota Corolla with 60,000 miles.
About $15k: https://www.kbb.com/toyota/corolla/2018/le-sedan-4d/?categor...
And I'm not sure what you consider a good deal, but $10k is a lot of money; nearly half the price of the car which has >80% of its useful life left.
:-) This is why everytime I've had to buy a car I think about getting a used one and end up buying new. And honestly, I tend to agree with the overall sentiment of this thread that cars a waste of money. I just don't want to have to think about the damn - I just want to get in and be able to get to where I'm going.
Depends if they did all the 60k service stuff or not. That's the first major service interval that could easily run you $2000 (brakes, battery, all liquid changes, belts, etc.)
EDIT: Prior to this car, I had a 2002 Pontiac Grand Am. That was the best car I ever had. Bought it for $2,000 and drove it everyday for 5 years until the engine gave up the ghost. Highly recommended.
Not sure I agree. I've seen people do that and they inevitably end up spending thousands on repair and maintenance the last few years of the cars life. Had they sold 'in time' and bought something used, but slightly newer and more reliable, I'm pretty sure they would have ended up ahead.
If you have the time/skill/equipment to do all your own repairs and maintenance it might be OK, but otherwise keeping an old car on the road gets expensive.
One of ours is a 2006 with just over 230k miles on it (Toyota). The last few trips to the shop for just an oil change and tire rotation has turned into large bills to fix things. I don't think if we sold it earlier we'd come out much ahead but maybe I'm wrong.
We plan to replace this with a similar 2-3 year old model and drive that one into the ground. Our other is a Ford and has not been as reliable. That will be replaced with a Toyota when it's time comes (which sadly may be with a lot less years/mileage than the Toyota).
I recently replaced the water pump in the 2014 and the dealer quoted between $4,500-10,000+ for replacing the pump or replacing the engine if the coolant being where it's not supposed to be broke bearings or anything else. I got a second opinion from a small independent shop and he took it step by step and confirmed no engine damage before I committed to the pump replacement. It was around $3,500 total.
Replacing the vehicle would have cost $20k plus, so the math made sense for me to repair. If I was looking at an engine replacement might have gone the other way.
Keeping up with routine maintenance is the most important thing and even then random things do break.