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.
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 ?
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.
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.