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The cost of vehicle ownership is indeed rising. I can remember getting a battery for my first car 30 years ago for $30. The last one I bought was almost $300 a couple years ago. It's more than that though. I do all of my own oil changes on my Toyota but my wife takes her Nissan to the dealership. My cost - $60. Her cost - $125. Surely the cost would be closer if I took mine in vs. DIY. New tires - $1200. Regular routine maintenance of any kind is expensive. Stuff that no matter how you care for your vehicle still have to be done. But compared to the cost of major repairs if you don't, they're still relatively cheap. For instance, my daughter continually ignored my insistence that she pay closer attention to her aging vehicle and sure enough the engine went out (I'm simplifying that but you get the point). The proposed repair bill was $10k, well exceeding the value of the car. Now, she has no car and has to share the one vehicle her husband has creating an unnecessary burden. And I would argue that your $400 battery is a sight better than no vehicle or replacing a vehicle. Still sucks.

The price of new vehicles is even worse. I remember my dad buying a new Toyota pickup in the early 80's for an exorbitant $3k. Mine cost 10x that 5 years ago. Pricing an exact replacement from a current year model is roughly $48k. 10x increase over 30 years is understandable. $18k over 5 is unreasonable. I recently have been pricing 1/4 ton options for potential trailer hauling purposes (wife wants an RV) and the least I can find would run me $75k. That would put a monthly payment in the same neighborhood of my mortgage payment should I decide to finance. That's seriously fucked. Sure I don't have to spend that kind of coin on a depreciating asset for a trivial luxury like an RV, but there are tons of people who depend on vehicles like those for real work. The fact that home ownership costs and vehicle ownership costs are essentially same over the average financing term of the vehicle is disturbing. Give it a few more years and vehicle cost will completely overtake housing costs and we will see a worse problem than we currently are in North America where people are being priced out of housing options. Without affordable and reliable transportation options, you can't get to work and earn money, spiraling the current situation out of control. With no effective options for Mass transit on the majority of the continent, it's a crisis no one really talks about or shifts resources to address.

Ok, rant over.

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When I bought my ute just under 10 years ago the dealership price for a major service was $1400. I told them at the first free service that they'd never see me again.

Since covid though cars have become a huge joke. 18 months wait times for delivery, $50K average price, 10 year old second hand cars rising price by up to 30%. It's a shit time to buy a new car but a great time to sell a good used car.

It blows me away how much debt some people must have. All these people with their million dollar houses, two cars worth 60K each, a caravan worth more than $100K. Then there is the people who are putting their kids through schools that charge upwards of $10K per year per kid. I'm old enough to have said goodbye to debt, and needing debt, but it's just as well because owing the kind of money some people must owe would scare the shit out of me.

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2 hours ago, AlSymerz said:

Cars definitely cost a fortune, but realistically the battery in the ute lasted 10 years, it never caused a problem in that time and spaced out over the time the money probably really isn't as bad as it seems when it first comes out of the pocket.

 

Get away?

Where do you get to go?

 

Brisbane from the 4th to 11th of Feb. As for debt I must be the only one of my brothers not to have any, not to say living within one’s means is easy but it shouldn’t be that hard.

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Will you be televised this time?

 

I agree, living within ones means shouldn't be that hard. One of the biggest problems though is that people don't understand money. My sis-in-law (wife side) is 15 years younger than us and she's still spending money on credit cards then getting new credit cards to pay off the debit of the previous card. She's convinced that when a CC company offers her a lower rate and she uses that card to pay off the other one she's winning. She can't be convinced that if she didn't have that debt in the first place she would be winning even more. She's got the money, but she still convinces herself that the points they offer and the deals she gets are saving her money.

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9 hours ago, AlSymerz said:

It blows me away how much debt some people must have. All these people with their million dollar houses, two cars worth 60K each, a caravan worth more than $100K. Then there is the people who are putting their kids through schools that charge upwards of $10K per year per kid. I'm old enough to have said goodbye to debt, and needing debt, but it's just as well because owing the kind of money some people must owe would scare the shit out of me.

Anyone that borrows money for a depreciating asset is an idiot.

At some point the music has to stop, but I gotta say that several people I know bought houses on interest only deals and watched the capital values go up (and never down) so the system actually works for them. Meanwhile, I buy a modest house I can easily afford and it seems to be the only property in the country that has been stagnant for 3 years! Possibly even gone down a bit.

In theory if the bank jacks up interest then those people I know can be screwed if they can no longer afford the payments, but because so many people are reckless with their debt you get into a "too big to fail" situation where society collapses if all the debt is called in and the true value of everything is taken into account. 

Capitalism rewards reckless behaviour. Which is why we're doomed. 

(Ray Reardon, Ray Reardon, we are all doomed)

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7 hours ago, JonoBlade said:

Anyone that borrows money for a depreciating asset is an idiot.

Such a simplistic view barely tells the real picture though.

I borrowed $15K in 1985 to buy a truck, that truck was a depreciating asset, shit it probably wasn't worth the money I spent on it in the first place. But that truck also became my job, that job became my life for nearly a decade, that job set me up for the rest of my life. If I hadn't jumped at the moment and took the risk of borrowing money I'd never have started my own business and probably ended up just another roadie making minimum wage getting nowhere and spending any cash I had on weed and booze. Thousands of other small businesses would be in the same position when they borrow money for vehicles, tools and technology assets, all of which depreciate quickly.

I can understand that home ownership is not something everyone aspires too but borrowing for such an item shouldn't be looked upon as idiotic. Borrowing $2M for a house that has little more to offer than a $500K house because of it's location is idiotic. Borrowing $100K for a car because the badge is better than the $50K car borders on idiotic in my books too. But simply borrowing within ones means, allowing a reasonable buffer for increased payments, I don't see that as idiotic.

Borrowing money is not the problem, and should never be considered the problem, borrowing beyond ones means is the problem. People need to know and understand what their means are, not expect someone else to tell them. In an ideal world banks wouldn't give people money they couldn't afford. In an ideal world people wouldn't expect things that are well out of their reach. But we don't live in an ideal world.

 

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Agreed. Borrowing isn't the problem. If you had to pay cash for everything, the world would look very different for all of us. Responsible borrowing and living within your means is the key to financial stability in later life. Most people don't act responsibily or like kuke says overextend themselves on frivolous luxury. The problem as I see it is the costs of goods. The trucks I've been looking at were almost universally 15-20k cheaper 4 years ago. Sure the pandemic has had an impact, but I'm inclined to believe the supply chain problem oft cited is less the reason than corporations seeing an opportunity to jack up profits and use COVID as a convenient scapegoat. Those prices aren't likely to come back down when the supply catches up. At least until the glut of new vehicles starts to rot away on dealer's lots. And where's the government asking the questions like "why is a 4-6 month work slowdown still having an impact 2 years down the line?". Work didn't stop everywhere, so the impact shouldn't be that severe. COVID didn't inordinately affect truckers, so why is there such a shortage now to move goods. Or railroad workers. Or fast food workers. Or.... Because government doesn't care when these artificial profits are directly benefiting them as much as they are the companies.

Consumer economics is a rigged game we are forced to play whether we like it or not. The whole thing is a house of cards on shaky foundations. We track the Doomsday Clock for nuclear apocalypse, but I think economic collapse is more likely in our lifetimes and the wider world doesn't seem to be paying attention.

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Exactly, spending what you can afford, at borrowing amounts you can reasonably expect to pay back makes perfect sense. In my case I’ve already calculated that I won’t be able to afford to buy a property where I want to live, and therefore I’m better off rent in that area. Until that time I’ve also calculated I am better off living at home due to the proximity to my university. Sadly not everyone is as logical with their money. Some of that is due to education, I think once you get to high school schools should be teaching, finance, and media literacy, as compulsory subjects. It’s hardly surprisingly, that young people are borrowing so much, for most of their lives, and certainly the entire period where they would be paying attention interest rates have more or less hell at the same level.

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16 minutes ago, navybsn said:

Agreed. Borrowing isn't the problem. If you had to pay cash for everything, the world would look very different for all of us. Responsible borrowing and living within your means is the key to financial stability in later life. Most people don't act responsibily or like kuke says overextend themselves on frivolous luxury. The problem as I see it is the costs of goods. The trucks I've been looking at were almost universally 15-20k cheaper 4 years ago. Sure the pandemic has had an impact, but I'm inclined to believe the supply chain problem oft cited is less the reason than corporations seeing an opportunity to jack up profits and use COVID as a convenient scapegoat. Those prices aren't likely to come back down when the supply catches up. At least until the glut of new vehicles starts to rot away on dealer's lots. And where's the government asking the questions like "why is a 4-6 month work slowdown still having an impact 2 years down the line?". Work didn't stop everywhere, so the impact shouldn't be that severe. COVID didn't inordinately affect truckers, so why is there such a shortage now to move goods. Or railroad workers. Or fast food workers. Or.... Because government doesn't care when these artificial profits are directly benefiting them as much as they are the companies.

Consumer economics is a rigged game we are forced to play whether we like it or not. The whole thing is a house of cards on shaky foundations. We track the Doomsday Clock for nuclear apocalypse, but I think economic collapse is more likely in our lifetimes and the wider world doesn't seem to be paying attention.

We are told it's the war in Ukraine making our locally grown vegetables harder to get and more expensive. I understand things like diesel and fertiliser etc are dearer and that cost has to be passed on. Even with the diesel discount farmers get my diesel costs on the farm have risen by about 30-40% in the last year or so. I can't put a 40% excise on every cow I sell, cows are sold by weight and at market value and while that price might have risen it hasn't risen 40%.

It is weird when it comes to what is an isn't effected by the war, covid, or insert current excuse. We've had shortages from dunny paper to rice, from noodles to flour, from potato chips to shampoo. Now we have a potato shortage due to the flood last year which battered the entire east coast. But at least with the potato problem it's easily proven, when the land is 6 foot under water it's hard to fucking grow crops. The idea that they can't make dunny paper because there is a war overseas or people in that industry are sick for 8 months has me buggered.

9 minutes ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

Exactly, spending what you can afford, at borrowing amounts you can reasonably expect to pay back makes perfect sense. In my case I’ve already calculated that I won’t be able to afford to buy a property where I want to live, and therefore I’m better off rent in that area. Until that time I’ve also calculated I am better off living at home due to the proximity to my university. Sadly not everyone is as logical with their money. Some of that is due to education, I think once you get to high school schools should be teaching, finance, and media literacy, as compulsory subjects. It’s hardly surprisingly, that young people are borrowing so much, for most of their lives, and certainly the entire period where they would be paying attention interest rates have more or less hell at the same level.

I really think kids should be taught money matters throughout school. Not just shit like "Mary has $100 and is asked to share it equally between her 4 friends, how much should each friend get?" Proper money education like how to get it, how to keep it, how to save it. Then once the basics are taught move into more advanced shit like interest and servicing loans etc. Maybe then we'd have check out staff who can figure out how much change a person gets when they pay with cash.

 

For those playing at home the answer to the above question is, each friend gets nothing. Mary tells them not to be lazy twats and earn their own fucking money.

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4 hours ago, navybsn said:

Work didn't stop everywhere, so the impact shouldn't be that severe. COVID didn't inordinately affect truckers

I don't know if it inordinately affected truckers, but for the last year or so there has certainly been a severe lack of drivers...the biggest issue is that the average age for truckers is on the higher end, meaning a lot of them are getting toward retirement age without any replacement drivers coming in to take over. They just can't fill the openings

There's also been a lot of problems finding people to work at the shipping yards, so even when stuff was getting here from across seas, there was no one unloading from the ships or loading it on trucks.

...but I'll second what you're seeing about vehicles. I replaced my old Tacoma with a more recent model about 4 years back...paid about $30,000 for it. A few months back, just out of curiosity, I looked to see what they're going for now, and yeah...it's about $10-$15,000 more for the same model. Sometimes with a lot more mileage on it then my current one started with

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They told us that the trucking industry was hit hard during covid, so many drivers travelling so many places either catching it or spreading it. But by mid '21 they were onto blaming different industries. The toilet paper and tissue industry lost a lot of staff and because 80% of bog rolls come out of one factory there was barely enough to go around. Then it was the frozen pea and bean industry (no other vegetables). Then it was the egg industry. Nearly every industry has had a go, and while it's some what feasible that a bug like covid could run rampant through a factory of workers, especially workers who were being asked to come back to work in small areas it does seem odd that it's generally only been one industry at a time suffering dramatically. The two industries that have remained constantly complaining they are short of workers are the fruit picking and cafes/restaurant industries, the same two industries that for years have hired tourists and back packers and under paid them while working their arses off. The thing is these same people haven't woken up, they spend their time bitching at the government to let international workers back in while saying Aussie don't want to work for less than minimum wage.

 

Car prices in this country have been ridiculous for years, not just because of the Aussie dollar, but because we make sweet fuck all here and have done for years. Even before the closure of Ford and Holden manufacturing, back to when Mishitibus and Toyota used to manufacture here, import prices killed the price of cars for people. Then came a luxury tax on imported luxury cars (or cars over about $50K I think it was), an even bigger joke now because ever car is imported into the country.

Using the Toyota above as an example the cheapest Toyota ute, which is the single cab poverty pack, steel tray 2 wheel drive, no air conditioner, is $50k. The one that matches what Toyota America call the Tacoma is our Hilux, 4wd, 4 door, tub matching the body not a tray, shiny alloy wheels, can't be driven off the lot of less than $65K and wont arrive here for 12-14 months if ordered today.

But the used car market is just as ridiculous, because importing is so hard. We traded the wife's 2009 Nissan Navara (Frontier in the US) a bit over 12 months ago. If we'd sold it pre-covid as a 10 year old vehicle we'd have been lucky to get $10k for it on the private market. However we traded it in 13 months ago as a 12 year old car on a new Isuzu and because of it's condition, low mileage and the Stealership had someone to buy it as soon as they'd done a stealership make over they offered me a shade over $16K as a trade in. Going by other dealership prices at the time they would have sold that car for about $20-22K. So while the car aged two years it also went up more than $6K because people were wanting second hand cars instead of waiting for new cars. So much for a depreciating asset!

Got me stuffed why people still wanted new (to them) cars but instead of waiting for an actual new car, or just not spending the money, they ran to secondhand cars that sky rocketed in price, but I guess that's just more reason why some people and money can't be trusted.

 

Since GG's been absent for a few days someone has to write the novels :P

 

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11 hours ago, AlSymerz said:

Such a simplistic view barely tells the real picture though.

I realised this straight after I posted. Borrowing to get up and running with a business with good prospects makes sense. That is the appreciating asset. As you say, borrowing for a $100k car just to show off, that is for idiots. Buying clothes on credit cards (unless you are literally naked), that is for idiots. ...going on an expensive holiday on credit, that is for idiots. Paying for an expensive wedding, whether on credit or not....THAT is for idiots.  

I also broadly agree with the comment on borrowing for a $2M house when there's the same thing for a quarter the price somewhere else, i.e. it seems wrong to overpay just based on location. But there are many factors involved in practice. 1. It is still likely to be an appreciating asset (stupid though it may be), 2. it might be genuinely a nicer/safer place to live, 3. your work may be close by.

A big factor in us leaving NZ after only a year was property prices in Auckland. We were renting in one of the nicest suburbs with no hope of buying on one salary unless mortgaged up to the eyeballs. I just couldn't do it. I'd feel too beholden to the job which I didn't particularly like in order to make ends meet. That may well be 95% of working people on Earth feel that way. I didn't want to be one of them.

Anyway, everyone seems on the same page here. 

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6 hours ago, SurgicalBrute said:

but I'll second what you're seeing about vehicles. I replaced my old Tacoma with a more recent model about 4 years back...paid about $30,000 for it. A few months back, just out of curiosity, I looked to see what they're going for now, and yeah...it's about $10-$15,000 more for the same model. Sometimes with a lot more mileage on it then my current one started with

Exactly the same as my situation. I bought my 2016 Tacoma in 18 with 10k miles from the dealership as a certified pre-owned for 30k. Had a dealer offer me 37 for it last year with 60k miles on it. That's what initially got me thinking about a new one, but the exact replacement would have been 48k. Used ones aren't even in the condition my current one is and barely cheaper than new when you can find them. Just not worth it and I don't particularly need an upgrade. Truck suits my needs just fine. I've no need to force myself to spend the money. I feel sorry though for those in the market out of need.  Even cheap basic transportation is getting dumb. 

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How about 24 months plus for a Toyota Land Cruiser 70 series. A vehicle that's basically remained the same for 39 years, still doesn't see the base model get an air conditioner, and now gets a higher GMV rating in Australia simply so that Toyota can register it as a medium truck and avoid the laws about side airbags which would require a redesign. For the privilege of waiting 24 months you also get to pay a minimum of $74K for the base model, or $125K for the top model. But if you can't wait there is a 22 model sitting in a shipping container, enclosed in an air tight bubble bag, never driven, less than 50ks on the clock, 1 of 350 made and you can have it for $150K. However that price rises weekly.

 

Houses are now a depreciating asset in this country. With inflation and interest rates rising houses are becoming less affordable and there are quite a few reports that point to house values dropping. Because of this idea that you can now borrow 95% of the house value there is a number of places around the country where people will soon owe more than their asset is worth. 

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