A little crunch
Aug. 3rd, 2009 11:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mattbellI accidentally dinged my car today while pulling it out of a parking space. I nicked the front left corner with a little 1x3 inch crunch and stripped some paint off. I was annoyed at myself, but the feeling didn't last very long. Basically, this is why I bought a car that already had lots of small scratches and dings on it. One more ding just nicely blends into the camouflage. The presence of pre-existing scratches also probably saved me around $1000 on the upfront price of the car.
If I had dinged a shiny new car, it would have ruined my whole day and would have cost ~$500 to bring back to a pristine state.
I feel that people often overspend on cars relative to their income. I can understand people who are passionate about particular cars spending a lot of money on them, and for those people it likely makes sense to do so. However, I think a lot of people overspend on cars just because they feel their cars should look as nice as everyone else's. The opportunity costs for that money are huge -- you can buy a huge pile of other stuff with the $20,000 price difference between a cheap car and a good new car. I could probably personally benefit from having a nicer car than what I have now, but I can't see spending a huge amount of money to get there.
If I had dinged a shiny new car, it would have ruined my whole day and would have cost ~$500 to bring back to a pristine state.
I feel that people often overspend on cars relative to their income. I can understand people who are passionate about particular cars spending a lot of money on them, and for those people it likely makes sense to do so. However, I think a lot of people overspend on cars just because they feel their cars should look as nice as everyone else's. The opportunity costs for that money are huge -- you can buy a huge pile of other stuff with the $20,000 price difference between a cheap car and a good new car. I could probably personally benefit from having a nicer car than what I have now, but I can't see spending a huge amount of money to get there.
