Quote:
Originally Posted by mjj
Thinking about purchasing my dream car next spring. It is pricey and would probably require me to delay my retirement an additional 4 months or so to pay for it. I am in decent health.
Just curious if anyone has contemplated this question?
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The biggest questions in my mind are what is this car and if it's high end, are you considering the costs to maintain and insure?
My father died at 70 from heart surgery complications. The two weeks leading up to his death and right before surgery, he was hell bent on buying a new convertible Mustang GT once he got his heart fixed. He was a car guy (had a 66' GTO) but once he had a family, he took the conservative approach and never owned a fun car like that again. When faced with age and death, I think he realized that he put off getting fun things for himself for decades and didn't "live" as much as he wanted even though he had the means. It always took the safe and responsible approach.
Being a car guy, I really took that to heart. I always wanted a Porsche but figured they were too expensive and hard to maintain. However, at 48, I decided to take a chance and I bought a 2011 Cayman as a fun car. Sure, it's only a $30K Porsche, but it's my Porsche, it is an absolute blast of a car to drive, and is generally easy to work on myself. Plus, everyone that doesn't know about Porsches thinks it's brand new and really fast. Neither is true. To me, this is my dream car and I'll never part with it unless it's totaled. If the motor blows, I'll replace with a built one and won't spare any expense doing that. With that said, if I didn't know how to work on cars, this car would have easily cost me $8K-11K in repairs/maintenance over the last 2 years rather than under $4K doing it all myself.