[yodsanklai]

> David Fox has plenty of savings. He earns hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. Recently, he allocated $60,000 to buying a new car—but when he arrived at the dealership, he could bring himself to spend only $30,000 on a used model.

David Fox may be making the right decision here.

The question for me is whether I have enough saving to sustain a decent lifestyle in an adverse, yet possible, scenario (getting laid off, declining stock market, inflation, reaching an old age, high medical expense...). And incidentally, will the $60K car make me that much happier than the used one for half the price?

Even with a high salary, it may not be a very good decision to buy the expensive car.

[arp242]

And the very next sentence is: "Despite making a conservative choice, he had panic attacks for a week afterward."

So whatever the "good decision" may be, this is clearly not healthy. This is really what the article is about, not whether a $30k or $60k car is better.

[ryandrake]

I guess it depends on whether he is having panic attacks or "panic attacks". Sometimes people exaggerate and say "I am literally having a panic attack" when they're mildly anxious. Maybe it's just run of the mill buyer's remorse. I know I would absolutely have buyer's remorse if I ever managed to spend $30K on a car, let alone $60K. I don't think that, in and of itself, makes me unhealthy.

[nixnixers]

This sounds like healthy psychology, incorrectly medicalized to me.. Who didn't question their big decisions like a major transportation decision before 1940?

I think there were a few exceptional places/people that lacked both normal scarcity and social norm pressure, but even the wealthiest people worried like these things mattered in most towns.

You can't just erase the entire cultural context of people and expect them to have no worries because there's a few more years to various peaks. They are experiencing the stresses of developing decision skills for a life that probably spans after peak petroleum, etc.

[arp242]

Panic attacks when there is nothing to panic about are absolutely not healthy or normal. Most people agonize over financial decisions such as this without panic attacks.

[nixnixers]

This sounds like anti-anxiety over correction to me.

We don't know how much future planning anxiety is warranted without knowing the future. We certainly know that past societies have a strong survivor bias for people who worried about the most significant life decisions they had.

A very flexible person and a turnip may both be well tuned to the economy at the moment but a less flexible person should be anxious as much for the behavioral effects of making decisions lightly on making future decisions in different circumstances.

[roenxi]

We don't know if it was a panic attack though. The journalist could just be describing pessimism.

> “I have this feeling that the bottom is gonna fall out,” Fox told me.

Take this quote for example. If we take even a mildly evidence based approach, this is rational. Sometimes the bottom does just fall out of the economy. It happens around once a decade. It is entirely healthy to consider spending large amounts of money as potentially risky and consider the possible consequences.

[stubish]

The thoughts described in the article sound a lot like OCD. Which is very common, so may actually be a common expression of OCD.

[darth_avocado]

Keep in mind, half of the hundreds of thousands of dollars goes to taxes: income, property, sales etc. It can actually be the case that you can’t really afford a $60k car even if you make that much money.

[Almagest88]

I make about 180k live alone in a mid sized rust belt town: until 2 years ago I lived like a king - the average income here is about 31,000. It’s still 31,000 now but I am hardly making enough anymore to save anything. How is anyone else ? Why do they keep making things more expensive ? Mg tax return flatly told me I was in the top 1.5% of wage earners. It I’m struggling , how are the other 98% doing ? How is this sustainable ?

[bachmeier]

Sorry, but this is ridiculous. $60,000 divided by five years (yeah, it will last much longer than that) is $12,000. If you're making hundreds of thousands a year and can't afford $12,000 for a car, taxes are not the problem.

[ifyoubuildit]

Parent may have been talking about affording the car, not the car payment. It's a classic car sales tactic to get people to focus on the payment instead of the overall price.

[more_corn]

Agreed. Nobody needs to buy a $60k new car. Buy one that’s 2 years old for $30. Where did the other $30k go? Dunno, but y ain’t gettin it back.

[wesleyd]

I absolutely agree with this sentiment, directionally, but the “new car premium” in the US is really quite small - it takes way more than two years for cars to half in price, more like five years, and sixty thousand miles.

For example, a brand new Toyota sienna XLE is a little over fifty grand. Carvana have several 21-22 siennas XLE, 40-60k miles, most over forty grand. I do not understand this.

[ifyoubuildit]

Agreed. This article (the part that wasn't paywalled) reads to me as representative of the mindset that leads to a country in $35T of debt with no fucks given.