A recent experience made me realize the best time to own the nicest car you can afford is when you have children. The nicer the car, the safer the car usually is.

Although there’s a nice mental health benefit to driving an old beater, I’m willing to spend up as a father in my 40s with two young children.

For two months, I drove a rental car after my car got bashed while under valet care. The rental car was a 2020 Nissan Armada with 60,000 miles. I had hoped for a newer Chevy Tahoe, but this Armada was all the rental car company had at the time.

Although the Nissan Armada was roomy, it handled like a boat. The steering felt loose and it easily oversteered. The car looked fine, but the interior felt cheap. Whenever I played a podcast, I wasn’t able to pause it. Most importantly, the car didn’t feel as safe as my 2015 Range Rover due to poor handling.

But something interesting happens after you’ve driven any car after the fifth time. You get used to it. After two months, I no longer thought about the poor handling and lower quality. Then I switched back.

If you’re thinking about driving a cheap old car, I think you should. The benefits of driving one far outweigh the joy of driving an expensive new car.

Something disappointing happened on the last day of our Lake Tahoe vacation. After loading up the car I swung around to the driver’s side. There, I saw an enormous gash in my car’s side panel and hood. Holy crap!

Apparently, a truck must have bashed my car overnight and didn’t leave a note. I had dropped the car off with the valet at 1 pm the day before. Cameras showed the car was in perfect condition when the valet drove the car to park.

My mind was racing as it usually does when something unusual happens. It was 12:45 pm and my original plan had been to drive 3.5 hours back to San Francisco while my two kids napped after swimming. We had already checked out of our rooms and had loaded up the car.

Originally, the valet guy had said I shouldn’t have a problem driving my damaged car back to San Francisco. But as a precaution, I took the car for a spin to see if it was true. Unfortunately, the damaged sharp-edged body of the car would poke and scrape at the tire every time the car went up and down. And it was just me in the car.

Once four more people hopped in the car, the clearance between the tire and the sharp-edged body would only be an inch. I didn’t want to risk driving the damaged car hours back to SF. Therefore, we came up with another solution.

Before I was addicted to real estate, I was addicted to cars. At one point, I had owned eight cars over a 10-year period. And out of those eight cars, one was considered a luxury automobile: the Mercedes G500. Buying a G-Wagon in 2002 was one of my biggest financial regrets.

Thankfully, once I became hooked on real estate, my addiction to cars faded. It no longer made sense to pay a lot of money for a car that depreciated in value. Instead, I wanted to plow as much time and money as possible into real estate to live better and potentially make more passive income.

My frugality with cars lasted up to 2017 when our son was born.

For three years prior, I drove a silver Honda Fit I had leased for just $235/month. He was an amazing car who could fit in about 25% more parking spots in San Francisco. For twelve years prior to my Honda Fit, I drove a 2000 Land Rover Discovery II I bought for $8,000 in 2005.

However, in December 2016, I decided to buy a 2015 Range Rover Sport which had only 10,300 miles on it. The paper-thin doors on the Honda Fit were too worrisome for me to use for transporting a baby. If something were to ever happen to him in a car accident, I would never forgive myself due to a misplaced desire to save money.

As a result, I paid $58,000 cash to a private seller who had the car originally listed for $65,000 at an Audi dealer. I still drive the car today.

If you’re usually frugal but are considering a luxury automobile purchase, let me share a surprising benefit of driving one over the past five-plus years. It could dramatically change your life for the better.

Despite being a shareholder in Tesla stock since early 2018, I’ve held off on buying an electric vehicle. With limited funds, it always felt better to invest $50,000 in the stock for potential profit than spend $50,000 on a base-model Tesla car.

Besides, I had just bought a 2015 Range Rover Sport in December 2016 to transport our expected baby. My ideal length of time to own a car is about 10 years. Largely for safety reasons, changing cars every decade is my preference. Besides, car engineers usually come up with nicer creature comforts during this period as well.

However, with gasoline prices averaging more than $4 a gallon in the United States, getting an electric vehicle may finally be a good idea. My RR has a 27-gallon tank. Therefore, at $6 a gallon in San Francisco, it would cost $162 if I were crazy enough to drive until the last drop.

The deja vu thing is, I clearly remember spending $100 to fill up my tank in 2008-2009. Back then, I was driving an eight-year-old Land Rover Discovery II called Moose. He only got about 15 miles per gallon. The high prices didn’t last for long as a recession ensued.

The difference between 2008-2009 and today is that today most of us are much wealthier. We should be able to better take the cost hit, especially if you’ve been a long-time reader.

I know I’m a late adopter of the electric vehicle trend. However, let’s discuss why owning an electric vehicle may be worth it. I’ll then share what I plan to do about our vehicle plans.

When it comes to cars, buyer’s remorse is the worst because there’s no return policy. Once you buy your car, it steadily depreciates in value over time. Therefore, you had better buy a car you really love, responsibly.

Let’s discuss how to avoid buyer’s remorse when purchasing an expensive vehicle. I’m assuming more of you will be YOLOing it thanks to robust investment gains. Further, many of us have realized during the pandemic that life is precarious. We might as well spend more of our money while alive!

My Own Buyer’s Remorse When Buying An Expensive Vehicle

My first experience with buyer’s remorse was when I had purchased a new $78,000 Mercedes G500 when I was 24 years old. I had received a lucky break from work and decided to splurge. Further, the G500 cost $150,000 a year earlier because one dealership in Santa Fe held the distribution rights.

Within two months of purchasing the car I regretted my decision.

A year and a half later, I sold the vehicle for a ~$20,000 loss. I sold it because it couldn’t fit in the garage of the condo I wanted to buy. After realizing how much better it was to own an asset that could go up in value, I decided to stop wasting money on cars.

I spent the next 14 years driving cars way below my means to try and make up for my blunder. I drove an old $8,000 Land Rover from 2005 – 2014 and a $230/month business lease Honda Fit from 2014-2017.

Then, in late 2016, I stepped up and bought a 2015 Range Rover Sport. It had 10,500 miles and cost me $61,000 after tax. If I had purchase the car new, it would have cost me $81,000 after tax. I wanted a safer car for our expecting son.

It’s been five years since I purchased the Range Rover Sport and I feel zero buyer’s remorse. Therefore, I got to thinking about how I was able to conquer buyer’s remorse when purchasing an expensive vehicle.

Here are some tips that helped me eradicate all guilt of spending a lot of money on a car.

In my 20s, I was a car fanatic. I’d trade cars every one or two years because it was fun. I loved to haggle with strangers to try and get the best deal possible. As I grew older and wealthier, my interest in cars waned. Today, I believe the ideal length of time to own a car is between 8-10 years if you buy new.

If you drive a new car for 8-10 years, you will have maximized its value while also minimized any safety risks that tend to appear due to age. I assume an average annual mileage of 12,000. Of course, if you don’t drive much, you can easily extend your car ownership period.

If you buy a used car, the best buying strategy for value, safety, and enjoyment is to buy a 3-5-year-old car and drive it for 5-7 years. If you do, you will skip the steepest portion of the depreciation curve. You can then turn around and sell the car for a reasonable price.

There’s an old saying in golf, “drive for show, putt for dough.” Hitting a massive 300-yard bomb looks beautiful, but what really counts is accurate putting. Well let me introduce you to a new saying, “Own one car for show and another car for dough.”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve lost money on the golf course because I three-putted instead of two-putted. I’ve also occasionally won money squeezing in an eight-footer. Those knee-knockers, when all is on the line during an Aloha bet, are intense!

Give me a regular 250-yard drive and incredible putting accuracy over a 300-yard drive and putting yips all day long. The same goes for cars.

I’m a one car type of guy. Owning a car is expensive, especially if you don’t follow my 1/10th rule. With the proliferation of cheap ridesharing options that have emerged since 2009, not owning a car is making more and more sense.

But over the years, I’ve had a tremendous number of complaints that my 1/10th rule is too restrictive. Instead of limiting the median American household to only spending $6,200 on a car, many people feel the typical American should be able to spend much more.

If you want to spend more, it’s totally up to you. Don’t let me tell you what to do. I’m just offering a simple rule to follow to help you achieve financial independence sooner, rather than later.

For those of you who love cars and want to own two or more cars, I suggest owning at least a Dough Car. If you do, you might build your net worth quicker than the rest. You might even better keep yourself out of trouble.

Ugh. So I just realized something incredibly stupid that only spending hours writing a post could have made me realize. I *think* I missed taking my car to the dealer to get its clicking noise fixed under the car warranty for free! Thus, I want to help you save money by knowing your car warranty so you won’t make my mistake.

I mentioned the clicking noise in my post on paying for repairs by cash or credit. It had had been progressively getting worse for about six months. If true, that means my clicking noise began in April 2019.

My car was originally purchased on July 6, 2015. I bought it from a private party on December 28, 2016. I wanted a larger car in preparation for the birth of our baby in 2017.

For some reason, I had assumed my car only had a 3-year/40,000, transferrable bumper-to-bumper warranty. So I just assumed that I had missed the window to get the problem fixed by 15 months.

But as I was doing research online, oddly enough on my own tax rules for deducting an SUV for a business post, I discovered my SUV has a 4-year/ 50,000 mile warranty!

If I simply understood my car warranty and what it covered, I could have taken my car into the shop by July 6, 2019. I would have gotten the clicking sound taken care of for free. Plus fixed anything else the computer found wrong.

Damn it!