Quote:
Originally Posted by Adam_L
Nobody (not me) ever said buying a car, any car (even used) is a good investment.
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I have. A vehicle can be a good investment if you treat it the way a company would treat a capital investment, AKA property/plant/equipment, where you invest money in an asset expecting to get a return from the use of it. If buying a new widget machine will make you millions of dollars in profit from producing widgets in the coming years, that machine is a good investment.
I bought my car for work, and it paid for a good chunk of itself through mileage reimbursement. I financed it and used expense reimbursement to pay my car payment. Since I paid it off, it costs me less to run it than the reimbursement, so I actually make money on it as long as I keep driving it for work. It's profitable in the accounting sense of the word.
And that's not even including the value of the utility of it. I need the car for my job. I would make significantly less money if I didn't have a vehicle, tens of thousands of dollars per year less, and I would miss out on other experiences that require a vehicle. Life would be a lot harder if I had to walk everywhere or rely on the unreliable public transportation system. So it's a profitable investment in the economic sense as well.
People would make much better decisions and feel better about the decisions they make if they would think about their large purchases this way.
What's
not a good investment is storing a vehicle in expectation of a capital gain, like real estate, a painting or a rare bottle of wine. For vehicles, that only works with very special editions or very limited run cars (not just special trim packages on a cheap sports car), and even then it's subject to the whim of the market.