02-28-2008, 09:26 AM
When me son was looking for his used car, we couldn't touch a Honda, or a Nissan, or VW or any quality import for under $8000 UNLESS to had 80,000 miles on it. Yeah, you can get lots of miles on them, but you will pay for it in maintenance, over the long haul.
We ended up looking at Ford Taurus' and other fleet type cars. You can get a 50k mile Taurus for $5000 if you shop right.
The thing I learned while used car hunting is that you really need touse the power of the internet to help you. The dealerships have internet pricing that WILL BE lower than the salesman in the showroom or lot will even be aware of. Use AutoTrader.com to find the deals. You do have to move fast when you find a car you like, we saw lots of good options get sold out from under us in hours of seeing them, while we went home to "think it over".
Do you research about what cars you want, and what they should be selling for, and when you see the one that fits the criteria, make the deal. At some point your time and effort starts to have a real value.
Last thing, by buying a car with much lower value, you can avoid the expense of insuring the vehicle. Our son's 2001 Mercury Sable would be $1600 a year to insure for collision. The car is only valued at $6500, unless he totals it, I'm willing to repair it up to $1600 (once). But he does only drive it to school and work, and does not put lots of miles on it, so for me, that is an acceptable level of self-insured risk.
my .02, having just gone through it last fall.
We ended up looking at Ford Taurus' and other fleet type cars. You can get a 50k mile Taurus for $5000 if you shop right.
The thing I learned while used car hunting is that you really need touse the power of the internet to help you. The dealerships have internet pricing that WILL BE lower than the salesman in the showroom or lot will even be aware of. Use AutoTrader.com to find the deals. You do have to move fast when you find a car you like, we saw lots of good options get sold out from under us in hours of seeing them, while we went home to "think it over".
Do you research about what cars you want, and what they should be selling for, and when you see the one that fits the criteria, make the deal. At some point your time and effort starts to have a real value.
Last thing, by buying a car with much lower value, you can avoid the expense of insuring the vehicle. Our son's 2001 Mercury Sable would be $1600 a year to insure for collision. The car is only valued at $6500, unless he totals it, I'm willing to repair it up to $1600 (once). But he does only drive it to school and work, and does not put lots of miles on it, so for me, that is an acceptable level of self-insured risk.
my .02, having just gone through it last fall.