Quote:
Originally Posted by iviegatron
At my previous job, there was a guy at a junior level position who came from Zimbabwe who was making less than $100k and was driving around in a decently optioned Audi A8L. Not sure what his financial situation was, but I can tell more than half of his paycheck was going towards car payments.
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I can relate to this. Long time ago I moved to States as a graduate student from a country where gas and cars are extremely expensive due to regressive taxation (i.e govt cannot properly tax the income so they tax the hell out of the goods). Once I got my degree and my first job here, I custom ordered a BMW that cost me one quarter of my income at the time. My brother, who needed to cosign the lease since he had good credit and I had no credit history whatsoever, jokingly told me that he was relieved that I didn't go for a 911.
Also one thing to consider is the true cost of a car rather than MSRP. If the car can easily be sold with little to no depreciation (something like a Tacoma, Jeep, Golf R, WRX STI, 911 GT3 etc) at any point during your ownership, is it really an expensive car as long as one can make the monthly payments?