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There’s a good thread at Ask Metafilter thread this morning: At what point is a car not worth repairing?
My ten-year-old 130k-mile Saturn is showing its age pretty badly — leaking oil, disturbing noise coming from the front end, crumbling exhaust system. I’m having a tough time coming up with a satisfying way to determine if it makes financial sense to pay for the repairs or to just ditch the car and buy a new one (living carless isn’t an option, cool as it would be).
The discussion includes how to decide when to buy a new car, whether one should buy new or used, and the advantages (or disadvantages) of leasing. One poster invokes the Car Talk guys, who say: “It is always cheaper to keep driving your old car than it is to buy a new car.”
April 21st, 2007 at 9:44 pm
[...] through the archived posts over at Get Rich Slowly and I found an interesting one called, “Fix It or Junk It?” The post led me over to Ask MetaFilter and this thread. There are three really good replies [...]
August 23rd, 2009 at 2:02 pm
I don’t have my own car yet but whenever I visit my parents, I just add my name in the insurance and drive their car. It’s really old. I think it’s older than me. No air conditioner. No automatic window (get a good exercise to roll down all four windows). It’s like a microwave in there in the summer. My parents are retired so they don’t use the car as much. So I took over the maintenance fee and the insurance. I spent about an average 300$ a year for maintenance. I think my father took care of it pretty good so I believe I can get at least 5 more year out of it. If I decide to fix the air conditioner with the condenser and all, it will cost more than the value of the car. But I can’t afford new car right now and I can drive without air condition, so it’s a best bet for me is to keep the car and not fix it.