Agreed. Whether or not you can justify it depends on your budget and your objectives.
My Ford Truck Project (And Other Projects)
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Agreed. Whether or not you can justify it depends on your budget and your objectives.
Ok, I'll add some justification-
It's extremely hard if you are staying in the same vehicle class unless you are going from a 10 year old BMW to a 10 year old civic 🙂
A 25 year old windsor based F150 that you own and know all the issues on is a fixed cost. It's the devil you know.
An LS based GMT 800 is going to cost 10k if it needs nothing or be rusted out and need an equal amount of work in rust repair you already sunk into it
Any modular based ford truck is going to eat coils, cam phasers, or shoot or corrode plugs
Anything dodge is going to be half iron oxide
Anything ~14+ that isn't rusted out is going to eat you alive in depreciation and require 20k to get into it.
A stock clean vortec GMT400 can be $6000 and be dead stone reliable but it's the same situation you have with your pickup you have now.
If you want something with an 8ft bed that never has to be made, 4wd, and isn't obliterated it's minimum $15k. I've looked for 3 years to find something that will replace my rainier and not cost me $75 and 2hrs labor/month on average in maintenance but nothing is going to cost me less than that in depreciation.
Everyone's situation is different though! I haven't been able to justify it. If it's not leaving you late to work broken on the side of the road and not burning away $2500/year in depreciation you are doing pretty darn good.
I agree with you on the 'devil you know' part.
Well that "leaving me late to work on the side of the road" isn't a guarantee. I'm frequently concerned about getting stuck in this thing.
Also, depreciation isn't an out of pocket cost. If you even want to say that this truck is costing me $400 a month in parts (which is probably an underestimate over the past few), that's $4800 a year, minus your $2500 in depreciation, that leaves $2300 in payments, which works out to around a $200 monthly payment.
So it's costing me the same as paying for a $200 monthly car payment plus paying $2500 annual depreciation out of pocket. Of course a car payment is going to be more than $200 a month, but I won't be paying out of pocket for depreciation either. If I take care of the new vehicle the way I take care of anything else, it should last long enough that the depreciation won't matter in the long run.
And additionally, that $400 in parts doesn't take time and labor into account. If I was paying someone else to do this work, I would be spending way more than that. I'm doing this work myself, and to my previous point, it's not fun anymore.
Yeah, fucc the cost, I'll write someone a check if it means I don't have to do anymore numbers.
That's enough reason to me! It's only worth being cheap to a point but if it's not fun, it's not worth it.
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