[Vwdiesel] [VW-TDI] OT: advice @ buying diesel for friend

[Erik Lane]

On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 4:43 PM, Tad <tadc at europa.com> wrote:
> - is this a dumb idea (buying the car, I mean)?
> is she really better off renting and letting the rental company deal with
> the hassle of owning it?
>

I think that she would be best off just continuing to rent or lease as
she needs a car. Letting it sit for most of the year isn't the best
thing - it's likely to need at least a little maintenance every time
she gets here, and where is she going to store it? Even if storage is
free for her, there are likely to be other costs so that it will take
longer than 9 years for her to break even at $1000 per year.

I don't like the idea of buying and selling each time because there's
a certain amount of risk each time you buy something, and how much
time does she want to spend trying to sell the car? If you're not
willing to wait then sometimes you have to just accept a low price,
and selling long distance is not something that I would even consider
to be a reasonable option. If she owns it then any breakdowns are on
her bill rather than the rental company.

How does she know now that she would want to keep up the same pattern
5 years from now, much less 10 or 15? I think expecting to break even
after about 15 or 20 years would be about right for an upfront cost of
$9000, considering whatever maintenance/repairs are needed over that
lifetime as well as the time cost of money and depreciation on the
car.


Even if it were for me personally I don't think that I'd want to plan
to try buying and selling each year. Buying a car and having it sit
for so much of every year doesn't sound very good either. Letting the
rental company make their money and take care of the hassles/upkeep
seems to be the way to go, in my opinion.

Erik