Buying a car

Me and my husband do not see eye to eye. To me, a car is just a transport tool, having one is better than nothing.

We currently owns a Toyota Wish 12 year old car, left with 8 more years of COE. Bought the car 2 years ago for 55k while trading in our Toyota Altis.

Instalment 550
Monthly car associated expenses 300
Petrol 100

considering the above, I have not much complaints as we seldom use the car except on weekends. His only complaint was that it does not have power.

But my husband has been blaming me for past 2 years, saying I was the one who pyscho him to buy Totoya Wish, trading in our Altis which was a better car and he blamed it on me.

Now when the economy is in the doldrums, he wants to change car. I really hate it when he decides so. He was the one who wanted to sell the Altis and he blamed it on me. Now he wants to sell the Wish and now it was all my fault again. Everytime it was only my fault.

Ended up he wanted to trade our Wish for a Axio which is in a lousy condition. This does not make any sense to me and he was hell bent on buying it despite my protest. I am the one who have to fork out the money for the car. Anyway we couldn't see eye to eye. I also refused to budge and in the end, I said I leave it to him to decide.

In the end, he settled for a expensive 39k Camry 2.5A with 2 years COE left. 39k does not seem like a lot, but if you divide it across 2 years, the instalment (assuming 70% loan) is 1200.

This 1200 is quite a big increase from the 550 instalment I am paying for the Wish.

I was thinking to myself, is it really worth it to pay 1200 for 2 years.

One way I comforted myself is that, I tend to ruminate on things alot.

I decided to do a very simplistic calculation to comfort myself.

a) Firstly the dealer is able to offer a much higher price for our Wish, 2.5k more than the others
b) The car has parf value. If we were to sell the camry before 10th year is up, we can get back at least 15k.
c) Lastly, I assumed that we would sell it at the end of 2 years for 15k. This means that though I am paying 1200/m, at the end I get back 15k which is equivalent to 600/m. It is muchiam as though the car only cost 600/m, not much of a difference from our current Wish instalment.

Of course (c) is being very simplistic. I have not counted the 30% downpayment that I would have to pay. For my case, assuming I could get around 4k (after settling the Wish), I need only fork out 7k. Which is still affordable considering that it is easily 15-20k of downpayment for other cars.

This is how I consoled myself. Because of this, I can no longer save 56% of my income. My saving % will dip to around 42%. My goal of retiring in 3 years, will be a challenge.

But whatever worrying, it will not change the fact that we have bought the camry. I hope I can still tahan my job for 3 years.

Jiayou!!!