[scrooched_moose]

It's very dependent on the car though.

I just bought a new Subaru for about $24,000. A 3 year used in an identical package ran about $19,800. For that level of a price difference I couldn't justify going used, with some likely impending mechanical issues and effectively no warranty.

If I had financed, the used car payment payment is actually far higher - about $577 vs $432 because of the shorter loan duration (yes, total cost is still lower).

It's one of those "/r/askreddit-style" pieces of gospel that people endlessly parrot without ever testing if it's still true, or at least realizing the truth is a lot more complicated.