Posts with keyword used-car→

Below is a short sampling of Internet resources that will help you get through the process of buying a new or used car step-by-step:

1. Edmunds: A great site for information on all kinds of new and used cars, excellent reviews and how-to-buy guides.
2. Kelley Blue Book: An excellent place to look up used car prices, and also has lot of other information on both new and used cars.
3. CarBuyingTips: A definitive source for tips for buying new and used cars.
4. Samarins: Another source of car buying tips that is my favorite.
5. CARFAX: The place to visit for used car history.
6. Buying a used car: A Federal Trade Commission site offering facts for consumers.

(This is the 4^th post of the 8-part series An investing-friendly car buying guide.)

You want to buy a used car (why? because of this and this), and have a budget of $10,000. Which one car, among the several hundreds of different types out there, should you choose? For the sake of this discussion, we narrow the field down to the 4-door sedan cars in mid-sized segments. (Everything said here holds for most other types of cars as well.)
Continue >>

(This is the 3^rd post of the 8-part series An investing-friendly car buying guide.)

So you are going to buy a used car. Great! You have made a smart decision. The next step is to pick a budget – how much you want to pay for your car. This step is important, because your choice will decide how old a car you are going to get. From the depreciation graph, tweaking the budget by a couple of thousand dollars can mean getting a car that is few years newer or older.
Continue >>

(This is the first post of the 8-part series An investing-friendly car buying guide.)

Let us look into car depreciation more closely. Depreciation, as we all know, means gradual falling of the value of your car as time progresses, due mostly to wear and tear. New car dealers do not want to talk about it, and new car buyers certainly do not want to think about it. On the other hand, those of you who want to buy a used car can get good benefit out of it.
Continue >>

There is an important difference between the two biggest single expenses in your life (if you live in America): buying a car, and making down-payment for a house. While a house appreciates in value (price goes up with time, usually outpacing inflation), the value of a new car starts depreciating the moment it leaves the dealership lot. Thus, paying 20% down for a house (the median house price was $232,000 last year) is a sound investment, whereas forking out $20,000 for a family car is not necessarily so.
Continue >>

• Welcome to PF&Investing

  I am a scientist working in a US university, and I also study the dynamics of financial markets and their impact on our financial health. More...

• Browse by keyword

  1-year-cd asset-allocation bond bull-market buy-and-hold cpi curriculum dealer-warranty demand-supply dow-jones edmunds fidelity fixed-income high-risk index-fund Inflation Investing long-term low-risk market-correction market-fluctuation market-timing money-market new-car paycheck portfolio-diversification purchasing-power random-walk-down-wall-street rebalance retirement-saving s&p-500 samarins saving secondary-market security stock-fund stock-picking t-rowe-price undervalued-stock used-car value-investing vanguard VIN warren-buffett wordpress