Board 8 > Roughly what price point do car dealers sell "good enough" used cars?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I'm trying to get out of debt. My current car is making plans on that not happening; the subframe is rusted and falling apart, and the car is probably dangerous to drive.

In order to avoid yet another debt, I'm trying to put enough money together to make a cash+trade purchase. My dad used to say that anything under $3000 and you're probably going to have problems. That was years ago, and I don't know if inflation has changed things.

From your experience, how much would you spend for a cheap used car that was in good enough condition that it wouldn't fall apart the moment you drove off the lot?

It depends what kind of car dealer but i would say the chepest level of car i would trust are in the 4-6k range without trade in.

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I bought a car for $8000 with 90k miles on it, and it served me superbly well for almost 10 years. Only reason I had to move onto something new was I had 2 kids and it wasn't big enough.

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$2500-$3500 you can get some great deals from private sellers. With the Dealer markup you are going to need to start around at least $4k
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My girlfriend recently got a used car for about 4,500 and she's had no problems with it so far.
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My current car (a mid-2000s honda fit with 100k km that still looks and feels good as new) I got for just shy of 4k (nzd) last year from a local car yard.

I bought a 2000 Pontiac Sunfire for $1400 off Craiglist 7 years ago with 110k miles on it. It was rusted when I got it but I never had problems with it. I replaced it with a real car 2 years ago (Mercedes SLK) but it's still sat outside and functioning now. My ex-wife used it when her car broke and my best friend has used it for a few months when his car broke.

It really depends on the car.

What kind of weather do you deal with year round?
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IfGodCouldDie posted...

What kind of weather do you deal with year round?

I'm near Cleveland, Ohio. Our seasons don't generally reach extremes, but there's a fair bit of precipitation. The road salt from winters can mess up cars pretty bad, unless you're fanatical about washing your car and keeping it indoors. (My car spent almost all of its time outside, so it's badly rusted.)

How long do you need the car to last, realistically?
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I'm hoping to get a few years out of it, five if I'm lucky. My goal is to pay off some debt.