That's the thing with cost of living, salaries increase along with it. It's also 2015, people are back to work and making money. Not everyone is scraping along in a 1 bedroom studio or driving a car from Bush's first term. Frankly, with half those cars you mentioned, the Hyundai leases for 199, and the Optima for 279,…

Which means if you Have a 60 month loan, you've got the paid asset. What's the issue? Cars aren't an investment.

603? Yikes. I remember when "subprime" was a 670-680. Frankly, when you're dealing with 550-600 scores, you're going to take what you can get. I can remember certain burnout friends of mine 15-20 years ago getting those JD byryder type loans at the buy-here-pay-here places for 17-20%. This isn't really "middle class"…

I say "as long as it isn't some third world piece of shit", and the first thing you show me is a VW. Way to be.

"expensive loans" at .9%?

For the second option: Gap coverage. It's like 8-10 bucks a month on your insurance, and covers the amount you owe if it's more than what they give you for your car if its wrecked. First is obviously up to the bank. Generally you're not going to see too many lenders that would be willing to roll an extra 15k or so…

I've always considered the Dave Ramsey-ites and Suze Ormond crowd to be like recovering Alcoholics & AA members. There's no "moderation" to them. It's either live like a pauper out of a 1 room shed and drive a 30 year old Tercel and reheat ramen noodles, or swipe a credit card to run up 78k worth of debt and finance…

You might want to look up used car ads some time. "Alarming depreciation" doesn't really occur much any more on anything other than high end luxo-sedans and sports cars. Pickup trucks, grocery getter SUVs, appliance transportation like a Camry, Accord, Corolla, Civic, etc depreciates at a very gradual rate, and…

Probably higher back in the 80s and nineties, when a 60 month note carried a 15% interest rate on it. These days, they just shrink their payments down with a 66 or 72 month loan.

Probably. Or they'll be rolled into their next car loan. Pretty standard procedure.

Explain to me how someone taking out a 0% or .9% type loan on a secured asset is "living outside their means"? Do you honestly think most people with a car loan are living hand to mouth? I'm honestly curious why you think someone who's borrowing money at under the rate of inflation is doing something dumb? It's…

What exactly are these "super shiny high end cars" of which you speak? I mean, if you're pulling down 60k a year and don't have a 3k mortgage payment and kids, it's not like a 5-600 dollar/month car payment is going to break you.

When you factor in inflation, it literally is free money.

Yea, Modern day is pretty cool.

Dumb, even by Tavarish standards.

r-junk.com CEO spotted.

Moral of the story: Nerds with disposable income are easily duped.

Be that as it may, your average nationwide field is about 37 cars now, when 10 of them are in the garage within the first five laps, and another 4-5 within 20, an "average finish" of 24th in a 25 car field doesn't exactly say a whole lot. It's like the ALMS announcers touting Dyson's "consecutive run of podium…

Watch the video, Denny hits her twice in the turns (which NASCAR is black flagging drivers for, no bumper-bumper contact or bump drafting in the turns), loosens her up, she gets out of it, he then gets underneath her and takes the air away. He did a similar move in practice.

Given that your average Nationwide field for the past 5-6 years is about 38-40 cars, with a good 12-13 start and parkers right off the bat, a top 25 average doesn't really scream out a whole lot of success.