I Finally Purchased a New Car (1/4) – Background

Post 1 of 4. This four-part mini-series will chronologize my thoughts and actions in upgrading to my new car.

Background

Before ”upgrading” to a newer vehicle, I had to really think about all of its implications, especially because there was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG, MECHANICALLY, WITH MY 1997 HONDA CIVIC . The biggest reason for my upgrade was purely emotionally. However, my emotions did not overpower my financial rationale. My emotions simply allowed me to make the final jump.

In my book, How We Prevent Wealth: A Personal Finance Reflection, I have a chapter dedicated to how we Change Our Cars Too Often, and in it I stated that many of us prevent wealth by putting too much of our money into cars.  I confessed that I’ve spent way too much money on my cars, which had set me back financially. I also stated that we need to drive reasonable cars, and that.

…a reasonable car is the least expensive car that can reliably and practically get us from point A to B.

My 1997 Civic was my reasonable car that I vowed to keep until I got my finances back in order. Again, there was nothing wrong with it, mechanically.

I also stated in my book, though,

To be clear, if we want new and nice model vehicles, there should be no reason why we can’t purchase them if all of our sound financial goals are being meet, and we have saved enough money to keep our loan terms and rates as low as possible. The problem is not necessarily the new car, though, but it is the fact that we prevent wealth by not focusing on the potential savings of shorter terms and lower rates, or we put our savings secondary to our new cars.

So, two years later, and now that my financial goals are on track and being met, I decided that it was perfectly okay for me to upgrade my “reasonable” 1997 Honda Civic to a “more reasonable” car. But again, the impetus for such as decision was mostly emotional, but did not entirely escape my financial rationale.