Ok my MIL was going to buy a new car to save on fuel mileage. I did an excel spreadsheet to figure out the cost and "savings" I will copy and paste the email I sent her. I don't know how to attach or whatever the spreadsheet here, but if anybody wants it you can pm me your email address and I will email it to you. I did it with formulas so you can change the numbers to fit your senerio. Here is my MIl info. She drives 60 miles/ day to work with diesel at $4.89 and pays $20 a day to drive to work. Her truck is really nice and paid off. I got numbers from the Toyota in Las cruses, and Car max in Albq. The saturn I used was an 2007 with 3k miles on it from CarMax. I picked saturn because I know first hand the good mileage they get. We usually get around 41 in ours. The Prius mileage I got from several owners websites as the actual average they are getting, from hand calculating it and not using the computer onboard. I tried to use numbers that fit your cost. I assumed you were driving 60 miles to work and fuel was around 4.89 a gallon ( the chevron at 1137 Mecham?) and it cost around 20 a day for you to drive the truck to work. Lines explained 1. Car= Make and year 2. Cost to buy car 3. MPG that "new" car gets 4. Cost/ gallon= cost to drive car at $4.89/gallon 5. Cost/day= cost per mile times 60 miles (est miles you drive to work) 6. Difference from truck cost= The amount you will save per day driving the car instead of the truck 7. Cost of car/ by difference in days = Cost of car divided by savings in fuel cost shown in days 8. Days in years to show savings = days/365 just to give an easy number 9. # of workweek days to drive= days/260 1 Prius 08 Camery 08 Saturn 07 2 $26,000 $20,000 $14,000 3 48mpg 33mpg 35mpg 4 .102 cents .148 cents .140 cents 5 $6.11 $8.89 $8.38 6 $13.89 $11.11 $11.62 7 1872.19 days 1800.37 days 1205.12 days 8 5.13 years 4.93 years 3.03 years 9 7.20 years 6.93 years 4.64 years So in short if you bought a Prius for 26000 you would have to drive it 60 miles / day for 5.13 years to break even verses just continuing to drive the truck during that time. If you do just weekdays (not counting weekends but still counting holidays, days off or vacation time which is 260 days ) it is 7.20 years until you would start saving money over driving the truck. This also doesn't include any other extra cost, like if you kept ins on all your current vehicles and added the new car that would be an extra expense too. I also assumed 0% financing to make it easy for me. My mom just put tires on her car and they are more expensive then the the 1 ton truck tires. I also have the numbers for a 'mystery car' if you bought a cheapo 2000 ish car for around 1500 that got 28 mpg it would take 1/2 of a year for that to make you start saving money. I had to sit down and figure this all out for myself before as well. Because it is easy to just see numbers and think 48 mpg's has to save money. But really all you are doing is changing the name on the check. Before it is being sent to the gas company, and now it is being sent to the car company. At least for the next 5+ years. I also did it for our situation. Dh drives a little car 60 miles/ day and gets around 41 mpg which cost us around $12 per day. It would take 17 years for the prius to start saving us money. Even the cheapo car would take over a year in our situation. that doesn't even includ the increase in ins cost and such. I also did one with an increase in fuel cost to over $9 per gallon, for my MIL and it would still take 3 years of work days to pay for the prius.
I have tried to space out the "spreadsheet" info to make it easier to read but it doesn't seem to work. Sorry
Wow, Aggie, you are awesome! LOL. I have a friend who is just like you with excel spreadsheets and figuring out budgets and stuff. Anyway, thanks for your figures as I will have no choice but to purchase a large vehicle for the size of my family.
Good work. I would like to add for others reading this that much depends on IF the vehicle gets the gas mileage advertise. (Personally, I have yet to have that happen.) Also, I noticed that I get up to 3-5 miles more per gallon depending on the gas I use. Then my typical gas switched to 10% ethanol and mileage went down 3-5 miles per gallon.
My van was going to cost me 2400 in repairs, and this was after we spent 2500 last summer and the summer before. It has DEFINITELY been cheaper for us to own our new car. We bought it in March for under retail and it gets us 29.6 mpg. I think you have to weigh all the facts.
In my example we were buying a new car just for fuel cost savings. I know that I didn't add in all the extras for lots of different situations. That would have been way to much info to figure out. And my mil truck is paid off. But also a per month difference in payment doesn't mean a savings. Say if you owed 10k on one van and trade it in on a 20k car your $40 savings isn't savings because you have 10k more to pay. If you traded across say from a 10k to a 10k car then the $40 would be a savings. Other wise it is just amortized for longer then the orginal loan, not a savings. If you are paying intrest it is actually costing you more. I agree that there is just some cars that need to head to the junk yard. But sometimes it is way worth the money to fix the car and drive it then buy a new one. We put $500 into our $1200 car because in the long run it will pay off. But that still doesn't justify a "new" car maybe a new to me car. One last note, after deprication it never pays off to buy a new car. A car that is a few years old has much more value to cost then a "new" one. I am not 100% postive on the numbers but it is something crazy like a new car looses 20% (20% of 20000 if $4,000) of value the moment you drive it off the car lot. That is alot of money to spend on the new car smell. I have alot of things I can spend $4,000. Here is a quote and a link to an article written by the NASD VP (like Kelly blue book) http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/auto/20011226a.asp
BTW I don't want to sound like an arrogant Jerk. I really just feel like most of america is uninformed and they just listen to the commercials and salesman, and get new car fever. Most people look at monthly payments and not the end results. I have seen this way to many times in person, and heard a million stories of people on the radio who are upside down in car loans thinking they were doing something smart. Just doing my part to educate America :lol::lol: Someone convinced against their will is of the same opinion still!
I booked our Suburban with www.kbb.com and www.nada.com several weeks ago and noticed that since gas prices have gone through the roof, the bottom fell out of the book value on my Suburban. We are upside down in our Suburban now by about $6000.00 in just a few short months. Unfortunately, we aren't able to trade our Suburban in because we owe more than it is worth. The larger vehicles are losing value quickly due to marketability and high gas prices. INMHO if you can buy a used car vs. a brand new car you usually get a better deal because it will depreciate the moment you drive it off the lot. You can find low mile used vehicles that are new as in a 2008 or a year or two old and get a very good deal. We don't put enough miles on our vehicles per year, (under 6,500 per year) to justify taking such a hit on the value of our Suburban to get something smaller. Our Suburban is only a 2005, we bought it used with low miles.
Oh, I agree about buying new!! We made that mistake when we first got married. Then we wised up! Both of the cars we have now were bought at about 2 years old. We got newer cars without paying for it to be brand new.
We used to be new car hounds! A new one every two years whether we needed it or not! :roll: We realized that we had nothing but big payments. We did learn that if we buy something too old it is nothing but problems!
Yeah, we learned that lesson, too! But, before we bought our latest cars, we drove the others until they were falling apart and no longer worth fixing. We plan to drive these long after they are paid for (which is hopefully sooner than later).
Our last used Suburban (not current one) was rode hard and put up wet! That thing left us stranded so many times and each time it was thousands of dollars to fix!
wow you're good! Well I'll have to say I won't be buying a new vehicle anytime soon- at least 4 years and probably won't then if mine is still running well. I drive a 98 accord that is a 5speed. If I myself am driving it I get around 30 to the gallon in town around 34 on the freeway. If DH is driving we're lucky to get 27 in town and 30 on the freeway lol or worse. I drove a lot more when we were in VA compared to what I've done since we've moved here and I only filled up once every 2 weeks. Didn't drive as much as your mom, but did a lot of driving. I'd love for dh to trade in his truck for a hybrid though. His truck only gets around 18 to the gallon and he commutes 30 minutes one way to work every day on a stop and go road.
We drive our cars into the dirt then sell them. We bought a '92 for $600 drove it for 60k miles, then sold it for $500. We put a water pump on it which is less then $100, and recharged the A/C for like $50. It was a terriblely ugly car but got great mileage and was reliable. We could have sold it for more, but dh wanted to give the guy who bought it a deal because it was for his daughter who was a single mom.
Dave Ramsey on new cars I am a big Ramsey fan he says no way especially if you think your going to get a hybrid and think your going to save money. Just a warning he is blunt :wink: Here is he's radio show on it if you have the time to listen. http://a1611.g.akamai.net/f/1611/23575/9h/dramsey.download.akamai.com/23575/audio/mp3/askdave/200_automobile/general/0200_061008_gas_mileage.mp3 I do think if you are looking into getting a new car pay cash for a smaller one and used. If you think everyone has to have a car payment, thats a wrong way to go about thinking. Sam
Thanks for the link Sam, I actually missed that show. But I have heard him plenty of times, he says it much better then I do. I love Dave.
There's a site out there somewhere where you can plug things in and it does it for you. My husband has a Explorer Sport Trac truck and he was considering trading in for an Edge or Focus....(not hybrid, but better gas mileage). It turned out it's really more economical for us to keep his truck. It's not paid off. Yet. We just got a software program that calculates out how much we have to spend each month to pay off all our debts, etc (including the house). It will take 10 years....but it will be done!
Ok now my two year old is walking around grabbing her hinney saying " I can find my hinney with two hands." hehe I guess she is smarter then congress!!! Too funny, it is better then my boy telling others, "for those of you in Rio Linda" before he says something. I wish my Mom would listen to Dave. My dad is totally against the new car idea. Maybe he will win out on this one.
