And by the time you get to that, you have house, kids, etc., to pay for.
My friends are admittedly a pretty frugal group, but, honestly, the only docs who I know drive baller cars are people who are making people who are likely making $500K+ (and who are married to other docs). And, even then, the baller car is, like, an Audi Q7. Many of friends who either make the most $ or have a lot of family money actually drive the “worst” cars (11 yr old Accord, a Fiesta, and, last time I saw, a Honda Element).
Everyone else is driving an RX, ES, C-, or GLC as the “nice” car (and a Camry, Accord, or Prius the rest of the time).
I agree but I’m specifically for this situation this individual if he values cars they have plenty of time when they are an attending to drive nice cars.
if you want to go the cheap and reliable route, I say get a 2023 Corolla Hybrid awd. Can find one for 26k msrp, has awd, toyota reliability and gets 50 mpg.
If the implication is that physicians can never have nice cars if they keep putting it off, that’s just not true.
My friend graduated 2015, finished residency 2018 IIRC and prioritized loan repayment. He’s almost done and just got his first nice car ($70s). His colleague a few years older drives an E63 or similar AMG. Another one drives an SQ7.
No, the indirect point I was trying to make is that, even when you can afford it, you may discover that there are other things you’d prefer spending the $ on.
Thank you for all the replies and advice. I love how much this conversation has evolved. For now, I’m going to spend a few weeks trying to sell it on Facebook marketplace. Would be nice to try to get closer to 10k for it, especially since it’s working well with no issues. Going to use a family member’s amazingly reliable 200k mile Acura RL in the mean time.
This is how a lot of these posts go, unfortunately. OP gets a ton of valuable input from those here, and then ultimately decides they are going to do what they were always going to do…which in this case is apparently FB marketplace and a for sale sign.
Yikes. If OP wants to sell their car privately, they could suggest meeting up with a prospective buyer at their town/city police station for their own safety.
Time for an automotive reality check. People buy old high mileage $100k msrp cars and either don’t know or are delusional about true cost of ownership. At least you are smart enough to realize this after a year, and understand the importance of dumping this car right now while it’s running well.
Your time is valuable and you have your priorities straight, so you probably should take the trade-in offer to a local dealer who has a vehicle that you actually want to buy. If you want an SUV, something good on gas and reliable, with high resale value like a RAV4, budget $25k, roll in the $3k negative equity, loan amount would be $30k, maybe you can get somebody to do that deal with $1k down. Financing for 60 months will be under $600/mo and within a couple of years you should have positive equity since it’s a desirable car, unlike an old Range Rover.
