I’ll start: recently my partner and I faced a dilemma re: purchasing a new vehicle.
Context: With a baby on the way we wanted to upgrade for space, safety, reliability, gas savings, convenience…etc., however, the prospect of purchasing a new car when our current vehicles were paid off (and could likely run another 7-10 years if maintained well) gave me quite a bit of consternation.
Decision: after much back and forth we decided to purchase a new vehicle and trade in one of our paid off vehicles, finance it at the dealership to get a better out the door price (more flexibility when they think they’ll make up the difference on the back end with interest), and then came home and paid it off right away.
Question for the community: anyone else been faced with similar decisions lately where the FIRE philosophy and spreadsheet numbers run contrary to life-quality-improvement wants/needs? How’d you make your decision? What factors did you consider in reaching a conclusion? And how do you balance the spreadsheet algos and numbers without becoming a slave to the spreadsheet and still retaining some flexibility?
We’re a one car household and went through something similar when the second kid was on the way. We had a ten(ish) year old car in good condition and it was fine when we had one kid. We realized it’d become impractical to haul three adults (something we do frequently since the grandparents are in the area) once we installed another car seat.
We ended up upgrading to a plugin hybrid mini van and we’re mostly happy with the decision. Almost all our driving is electric and we can comfortably haul four adults with two car seats installed.
We mostly approached it from lifestyle point of view and what we wanted out of a car. Spending the money sucked, of course, but it sets us up for the hopefully the next 10+ years.
With the second kid on the eay we are facing a similar decision but I can’t say I have anything useful to add. I’m not super concerned about the money though since arguably its just part of building the life I want to live.
That’s ultimately what it came down to for us as well. Yes it would have been nice to keep the numbers on the sheet, but I had to remind myself that the purpose of FIRE (at least for us) is to be able to live stress free (or at least with significantly less stress), enjoy life and the fruits of our labor, and be able to give generously and help those we love and care about. The car, while a temp setback in terms of immediate liquidity, hits all three of those on some level. It’s just hard to make that mental shift. As one of my mentors has said in the past, “earning money is easy, spending it is hard” (tongue in cheek obviously on the first part)
Now I just have to get over my dislike of the automated plastic computers all modern cars have become.
Hot tip to retire faster. Avoid paying the stupid tax. Just had to shell out $800 after driving on a flat tire.
Benefit of pursuing FIRE, I can just drop $800 to fix a stupid mistake without blinking. Better than the average American who couldn’t handle a $500 emergency.
