Americans spend too much money on their cars. This is because they finance the purchase.

When you borrow money to buy something that loses value, this is a bad idea. And nearly all cars do lose value over time.

What this means is the car that you drive around in daily depreciates. Time literally erodes what the car is worth. But, if you have financed your purchase, you are paying interest on it. You end up paying more overall than the original purchase price, while the car drops well below the purchase price in value. Instead of doing this, try these tips the next time you buy a car:

Don’t finance. You are probably going to want more car than you can afford. At car dealerships, there is a loan officer there ready to help us get this car anyhow.

Our purchase gets mixed up with emotion, because we often become very attached to cars and want a nice one that we think will show us in a good light. Loan officers know this. Often, loan terms are harsh with high interest and bad terms. At the end of the financing period you’ve spent far more on the car than what the original sale price was.

No leasing. If you wanted to buy a house, you wouldn’t rent an apartment instead would you? It would still give you a place to live, but would be a waste of money. Leasing a car is just renting a car, but over a period of years rather than days or weeks. The dealership will also add cost to the leasing agreement to cover the damage they expect you’ll do to the car.

This is seen by many people as unfair. You end up paying for damage, before you do anything to the car, because other people in the past have damaged cars. Worse, you pay a great deal of money for years, and at the end of the period you don’t have a car to show for your thousands spent.

Don’t buy new. A brand new car sells for absolute top dollar. It will depreciate a great deal the minute you drive away in it, because now that you own it, it cannot be considered ‘new’ any more. When you buy new, you’ll lose a great deal of money if you ever want to resell the vehicle.

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