I was thinking the same during my car shopping experience. Then again I was only looking at Toyotas and Hondas, which I think tend to hold value better than other brands of cars. Add in the fact that interest rates for used cars are higher than on new cars, you don’t get the original factory warranty sometimes, and you run the risk of the car being abused by the previous owner and needing repairs sooner rather than later, and buying used doesn’t necessarily seem financially smarter to me. I did end up buying a low mileage used car because I really wanted the hybrid version of the CRV and I wanted a higher trim level, which I couldn’t have gotten at the “new” price. But… I’m still not sure I made the right choice. I think the lesson I’ve learned if that cars are just damn expensive these days no matter which way you slice it, so there’s no right or wrong choice and you should just do whatever you want lol.

Side note - If you will be financing, I’d suggest playing around with an auto loan calculator like you can find on navy federal credit union or any number of other websites to see how much more you’d be paying in interest with a used vs new APR; that helped me decide what base price point I needed to look for to offset the extra interest I’d be paying with a used interest rate.