re: Car Guys: Keep, Sell, or Trade

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You don't have an option of not maintaining your vehicle and expecting it to run.

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Modern cars are engineered to last, if properly maintained, for 200k miles or more before you have to really start doing A/B analysis for repair/replace.

But what do people do? They start to trade when they go positive in equity, and get a new car - perhaps with an even smaller note (of course with a new 60 or 72 month term) - if they ever get one paid off - look out world - because they miss that car note. So many people barely get out of warranty before they trade in (and often up, because they can "afford" more car, now).

Again - I'm not going to revisit that discussion last month where you sought vindication to buy more house they you could really afford. At least that was not for a depreciating asset.

The math is just not on your side here - it can be the right decision to buy a new/newer car. It is just very, very rarely the right money decision - particularly if your existing car is serviceable (and most are out to 18, 20 years, 200k to 225k miles).