How much $$$ do you make?

[bydabeach]

The short and long is that the purchase was more than I've spent on any vehicle historically, but easily within my budget to be able to afford it.

Same here. We are very frugal and scrupulous savers. Have long wanted a pickup truck, but could never justify owning one with poor mpg of ICE pickups. With the tax credits and no sales tax in NJ, this made sense. Plus, we are doing solar, so charging will cost us virtually nothing, and no maintenance. Too many reasons to not get one. No regrets.

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[Coolbreeze704]

I haven’t purchased yet. Still waiting for a standard range XLT. Will EASILY be the most expensive vehicle ever purchased.

Less maintenance, no oil changes, brakes, and cutting out expensive Canadian fuel prices is my justification for breaking the bank on this purchase.

I'll sell you my SR XLT.

 

[Zprime29]

We wanted a battery back up for the house, but couldn't justify the cost when it wouldn't be needed very often. Needed a new car, so why not kill two birds with one truck? I love the utility of it and of the potential of it in the future. I look at this purchase as half car, half piece of mind, and half investment. (Yes I know that's too many halves.)

Another way of thinking about it, is that it's better to be in debt in a high inflationary environment. I've little faith that our current inflation woe's will be going away anytime soon.

 

[Yellow Buddy]

The fact is, some people here are “affording” a 39k price protected PRO…

That would be me…and by “affording” we mean playing hide and seek with the repo man right?

 

[brewski]

Nobody's business.

 

[Monkey]

With the multitude of data farming methods out there, privacy or not for participants, why would anyone participate in this poll? Serious question. ...I generally wonder about that for most any of the tracking and delivery threads that associate VIN with buyer username and location.

 

[antimatterparticle]

None

 

[Fastnf]

I sold my large house and bought a Lightning pro. No I am not living in the truck. I down sized to a much smaller house. Now I have no house payment or car payment. I am at the bottom end of the income spectrum but I am very efficient with my money and quiet happy.

 

[Kev12345]

With the multitude of data farming methods out there, privacy or not for participants, why would anyone participate in this poll? Serious question. ...I generally wonder about that for most any of the tracking and delivery threads that associate VIN with buyer username and location.

can you elaborate?

 

[bryan995]

Need to add more options to the poll. IMO 240k is not even close to being able to 'afford' a 80k truck.

1/10 rule would require a >800k income to "afford" a Lariat ER

 

[Kev12345]

I’ve never seen the 1/10th rule before?

I’m familiar with 20/4/10.
20% down. Finance the remainder for 4 years as long as the vehicle related expenses don’t total more than 10% of your monthly income.

$80,000 truck with $16,000 down.
Finance $64,000 over 4 years at 6% is around $1500.00/month.

Not including insurance and electricity costs associated with the vehicle, you need to be clearing $15k per month or $180,000/year.

 

[H3IMDALL]

I think your top end is far too low to be statistically useful lol.

 

[Yellow Buddy]

I’ve never seen the 1/10th rule before?

I’m familiar with 20/4/10.
20% down. Finance the remainder for 4 years as long as the vehicle related expenses don’t total more than 10% of your monthly income.

$80,000 truck with $16,000 down.
Finance $64,000 over 4 years at 6% is around $1500.00/month.

Not including insurance and electricity costs associated with the vehicle, you need to be clearing $15k per month or $180,000/year.

Or more realistically, $97,000 Platinum with negative trade in value of $2,000 = $99,000 / 8 year loan @ 8% is $1,735/mo. At 35% of salary = $4,957/mo or $59,500/year.

If anything the lower end of the range isn’t low enough.

On a serious note, people have been complaining about student loans but auto loans are just as problematic and not getting nearly the right attention. This poll shouldn’t be about how much one might make, but how little.

Median US income was $44,000
Avg car price $49,000
Avg car loan length: 70 mo @ 5.16% (old data)
Avg car loan amount: $42,000 (15% down)

Which suggests people are regularly spending much more than the recommended.

With the increasing interest rates, when people go for new cars there’s going to either be a need for a 84 mo loan term, or they’re going to need to step down to a cheaper car to stay within an “affordable” monthly payment. I’m willing to bet it’ll be the former…

I’ll get off the soap box now..

 

[ericpullen]

On a serious note, people have been complaining about student loans but auto loans are just as problematic and not getting nearly the right attention. This poll shouldn’t be about how much one might make, but how little.

I think the reason you hear so much about student loans is that you cannot bankrupt those, versus a car loan (or really any other line of credit) where you can file for bankruptcy if something catastrophic happens. Not that anyone should want to do that, but life happens and sometimes its the best option for some people.

 

[meow]

I think your top end is far too low to be statistically useful lol.

It represents 5% of household income, so I don’t think it’s a useless statistic: it shows that (at the time of this post, assuming an accurate and honest response from those contributing to the poll) 41.2% are in that very high income bracket. Along with the comments (in this and other threads) reinforcing how much privilege is required to suitably financially sustain ownership, it paints a pretty accurate picture of forum participants.

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