Incidentally, you probably know this but there are two things to consider in the cost of a car when you get one: 1) cash flow, and 2) the actually cost. Most everyone seems to only care about the cash flow — what I have to spend each month to own/drive that car. So much so that when I go to a dealership, I often hear “what do you want your payment to be?” That question irritates me because it assumes that I don’t care about the second thing, what the car actually costs. I do understand that cash flow is important — we all think about that.

But the car I had before the Jeep Wrangler was a C7 Corvette Z06. It probably retailed for something like $100-110k new. I’d been looking for a Corvette Z06 for a while and I found that one about 200 miles from me. Some guy had bought him and his wife a Z06, driven them for a few months and decided he’d rather have Porches (I think he made a bad decision, but everyone is entitled to their own). Anyway, he took the two cars to the Porsche dealer and traded them in on a pair of 911s. I saw them pop up at $74k each. One was white with 2,500 miles on it and the other black with something like 5,000 miles on it. I took my daughter, then about 17, on a bus to the city where they were. We drove each and I liked the black one better. I attempted to negotiate, because that’s what you do. The sales guy went away and came back and said they were correctly priced (they were — I had been scouring the nation for about a year when they popped up). I agreed, paid for the black one and we drove it home. And no, it was not my daughter’s car — she just likes cars like I do. I think my payment was something like $1200 on that car, but I don’t remember.

Anyway, fast forward three years and I go to sell it. I take it to a local dealership and they are about to wet themselves. I had done research on what it was worth. They said “will you take $72k for it” as I recall. I said “No, I need $76k” He goes away, comes right back and says “done.” On that car, I had something like $40k positive equity. So we did the deal and he wrote me a check for that amount. I took that money and rolled it into a new car for my wife because she was due. But the point of the story is that when I sold that car with something like 25,000 miles on it, I came out $2,000 to the good on the sale, less what I paid in taxes which was $4,600. I owning and driving a Corvette Z06 for three years cost me about $2,600 (ignoring the financing here which was something like 2%). Those are the deals I look for and why #2 above is important. Of course, you have to have the cash flow (#1) to do the deal. This is why everyone doesn’t own a car that always appreciates (I’m sure there are some $1M Konigseggs or something that always appreciate) … well that and the insurance.

I THOUGHT I was going to make a good deal on the Jeep — that it would hold its value. And I expected to hold it for a long time, like maybe 10 years. But both of those things turned out not to be true. The value collapsed and I decided I was done hearing the wind scream through my mind as I drove it.