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Even households earning $150,000 a year are struggling with credit card and car payments
(www.cbsnews.com)
this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2025
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If a median new car is 50k and used car is 30k that's a out 1k or 600 per month note alone.
Insurance is 100-200 per month plus gas and maintenance prolly another 200-300 per month so for a single adult to "drive with dignity" it costs 1k to start
Now double it for a couple and household is 2k on vehicles alone.
Makes me wonder if high school kids still get cars like people did pre covid lol
This cost structure doesn't make sense. When suburban family has to run a fleet of 3-4 cars
I can currently find a bunch of used, decent Toyota corollas in the 7-10k price range. Liability insurance should be like $50/month.
Your estimates seem quite high to me.
$50 a month where? People here spin signs saying $30/month insurance but that is not insurance. Actual liability coverage here is hundreds a month. $200 would be low.
Oh, I just checked and I was wrong. I pay $61/month to Progressive for liability on a >20 year old small pickup truck in California. $100k per person, $300k per accident, in case I crash into a pile of Ferraris or something.
The liability is $50/month but uninsured motorist insurance is most of that additional $11.
I'm paying for insurance in case I get hit by someone who doesn't have insurance? Ridiculous.
Our uninsured motorist is almost 1k every 6 months, plus bodily injury even more, the property damage coverage is not as expensive as the people damage insurance (which makes sense). It's like a vicious circle - insurance is high for uninsured but then as it costs more, more people get uninsured.
Wow, that's expensive. I'm a cheap ass. I've always had cheap, old Toyotas.
I can see how it's nice to have a more modern car but I just can't justify all the expenses. I'd rather retire sooner.
Yeah if I can keep the 2014 Honda going I will. Was going to keep its predecessor, the Civic but someone ran me into a phone pole and totalled it, in 2014.
Partly because it's manual and that's hard to find now, but I love it and it's paid off and I don't drive a lot.
I have no.accidents and I pay triple that for legal minimum liability
That's wild. I pay less than $500 a year for like $100k in liability insurance. Maybe I'm just old and have a good record.
Do you have tickets?
One, red light camera. Must be my zip code
this guy was the 1k beater, 5 years ago
good job at reading
Even about 25 years ago, $1000 would get you a car without major cosmetic damage but it'd have a couple hundred thousand miles on it. You can still get that for around $3k today. I see them on craigslist right now. Where I live, minimum wage has increased 2.5x since then.
There's your beater for roughly the same number of minimum wage hours worked.
Tell 'em, boy