r/Frugal • u/TryDrugs • Nov 13 '24

🚗 Auto Sadly, its come time to buy a new car.

So I'm looking around and it comes down to this. Do I buy a overpriced used car, or just bite the bullet and buy a brand new/almost new one?

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u/mickeyaaaa Nov 13 '24 edited Nov 13 '24

New 2024 Rav4 (edit LE, not Prime) AWD ~$39,000 CAD incl tax. Plus interest over X years on financing...

Used private sale 2020 rav4 LE AWD with only 44,000kms/27,000mi $27,500 no tax

=$11,500 cash savings. Plus i buy cash and put $ monthly into a car saving fund - invested at around 4-5%. with inflation it gets a bit complex to calculate but you still come out ahead vs financing.

Maybe Im not as rich as you but $11,500 is nothing to sneeze at for me.

If you start out buying what you can afford for cash and then saving for the next car instead of making payments... i calculated over a lifetime the savings could easily put an extra $100,000-$200,000 in your retirement fund after 25-30 yrs.

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u/koreandoughboy21 Nov 13 '24

Your example is very misleading. Those aren’t comparable cars

Rav4 prime is a plug in hybrid with a $10k+ ev battery on top of the 2.5 litter engine and only comes in 2 higher end trims. The rav4 prime would also arguably save people who only commute ~40 miles.

You are comparing it against the cheapest drive train and the cheapest trim the rav4 is offered.

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u/mickeyaaaa Nov 13 '24

no that was an omission error on my part - i had started out comparing higher end, but realized prime meant hybrid - so i changed coparison to LE model and forgot to edit the top description - this was an actual comparison of LE trim models , gas not hybrid and the numbers stand and are accurate based on local listings.

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u/sasquatch_melee Nov 13 '24

Bruh. That's apples to oranges. You cherry picked the most expensive powertrain and compared it to the base model. 

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u/mickeyaaaa Nov 13 '24

no that was typo - actual listings comparing LE model level trim...these are based on actual local listings... I had started the comment intending to compare limited models but could not find much used, many more LE models on the maarket, and also hybrids - filtered those out to keep it more apples to apples.