How We Spend Our Money

L

Lon

Well-known Member
Location
Central California
I drive a 2001 Toyota Camry XLE in mint condition with only 84,000 miles and play golf with a full set of Calloway clubs purchased 15 years ago. I have been asked many times. Lon, why don't you get your self some new clubs and a nice sports car, I'm sure you can afford it. That just doesn't sound practical or logical to me. Unless the car totally breaks down and my golf game goes really off, I will probably die owning both. Hell---I feel self indulgent when I get a full body massage every week and a pedicure every three weeks and drink decent wines daily.:D
 

we drive an 2001 ford ranger with 236000 miles and an 2008 vibe, both paid for, we enjoy plays and going out to eat and working part time....I buy and read to many comic books and books in general, we do most everything we wish to do....(I have money in the bank to replace the car when it quits, the truck another old one will be fine I only use it around the mini farm for wood and once and a blue moon to the job.)
 
I feel the same about my 2008 Chevy Malibu. It's in mint condition, I bought it new and only just turned 30K on the odometer. Because it's been so good to me I just spent $2300 on it. The dealer said, "Jim why not just let us have your car and we'll put you in a brand new Malibu?" I thanked him for his interest and drove my baby out of there. It may be my last car.
 

I mostly drive my '96 Jeep Cherokee daily, it's well maintained by my husband and he keeps records on all his vehicles to show that. We also have a '92 Dodge Ram Cummins Diesel, which has served us well over the years, and is mainly used for camping trips on rough back roads. Our newest vehicle is a Dodge Nitro '07, all are fully paid for. We talked about possibly getting a new truck that was automatic with more modern suspension for the driving we do, but that's up to hubby, we're both fond of the truck we have now.

We never were interested in spending money on fancy baubles or showy cars, things like that don't interest us. If we want to splurge on something now and then, we do it. We're far from rich, but having an eye on early retirement since we were younger, and being able to do it, is a gift in itself. You can't put a price on living the way you want, without spending wisely over the years, we'd still be working...and that, to me, would be terrible.
 
We have a 2003 Citroen Picasso. 80k miles. Still fine and well-maintained but we don't drive it a lot any more. We take the buses which are free for us old people. I've never wanted a status symbol car. We prefer to spend on travel.
 
I have never been into flash cars, I have a reliable Toyota Corolla 2003 model about 130000 km, I bought this one about a year ago only because my old car which I had for 17 years was getting close to 300000 km but still running really good
I see the old one in Adelaide from time to time and still going strong.
mine gets used most of the time because Hubby's fuel guzzling Rodeo is to expencive to run his is only used if we are going away with the caravan
 
I don't mind driving older cars around town, but when going on long trips I want something newer that I feel will be reliable. When I get to the point that I can't travel much, an old car will be fine in my golden years.
 
I've always preferred practicality over flash. My daily driver vehicle is a 2002 Buick Lesabre, my wife drives a 2005 Subaru Outback. We also have a 2006 Durango that we use exclusively for highway travel, and I also have a 1999 Dodge pickup for times when I need to do some hauling.

I do almost all my own maintenance and (on the rare occasion something breaks) repair work. We've never had a vehicle payment.
 
I bought my very first car on time payment , but didn't have any other choice at the time. After that experience I saved until I had the money to buy a car. The only time payment We had after that, was the house we had built in Adelaide.
 
Buying new cars every 2 or 3 years is a real waste...unless a person puts a lot of miles on them. I had to drive quite a bit when I was working, but now, in retirement, that no longer holds true. Our primary car is a 2010 Impala, and we only have about 30K miles on it...I have No plans for trading it in the foreseeable future. I also have a 1997 Dodge Dakota SLT 4WD pickup with only about 85K miles on it. It looks and runs almost like new, and we keep it so we can get out in bad weather, if need be. I look at new PU's once in awhile, and it would cost me over $40,000 to replace it...a Total waste of money. If I can keep this Dakota running and looking good with just routine maintenance, etc., I will probably keep it until I'm too old to drive.
 
I would probably have kept my 2000 Grand Am back in 2011 until it broke a spring and I was starting to put new car sized payments into keeping it running. I had only 100,000 on it. I leased/purchased a 2011 Toyota Camry. Currently I'm driving about 5500 miles a year and when I retire (which may be a year sooner than I originally planned) expect that to drop by about 1/2. I expect that this car will be my last. My only regret here is that I am paying it on time because I've supported my sister's family the last 6 years . . . not happily but felt like I was obligated to. Have never really been extravagant in my desires and I've done the traveling I wanted to do when I was younger. It takes very little to make me happy.
 
I drive my 2003 Ford F150 most often. It has almost 90,000 miles on it. We take my wife's 2002 Ford Explorer when we go places together or on trips. It has less than 80,000 miles. We bought the Explorer new in 2001. I bought the truck used 9 years ago. I had my previous truck for 17 years.

We bought our vehicles on credit. The interest rate was very low and we didn't have to bother our savings. As always, we paid them off early, still without dipping into our savings.
 
From 1965 until 2006 all of our vehicles have been used. ("Broke in") We had a large family (6 kids) and a roof over our heads that took priority..
 

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