A new car is a depreciating asset. Keep the old one until repair costs (not maintenance costs) start climbing. With cars today, a car with 50k miles is a baby. Just to prove that I practice what I preach, one of our cars is a 1999 Toyota Corolla (named Lola the Corolla) that has 262,000 miles on it. Making a large investment based on emotions is not smart. You want to maximize the miles/dollar you spend on the car. If you buy a new car for $30000 dollars, the moment you drive it off the lot it's lost 11% of its value, so your miles/dollar is each mile driven costs you $3,300 dollars. Each additional year your car will lose 15 to 25% of its value. So, after one year and assuming you drive the average 12,000 miles per year, your miles/dollar will be between 38 cents and 63 cents a mile. My toyota which originally cost me $14,000 and is now probably worth nothing has cost me about 6cents a mile over the years.
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How we spend our days is how we spend our lives. We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
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