Where I am from my salery is quite okay to be honest. I get about 3700 € after taxes (state insurances, health care etc.) each month but I don’t see me affording a car anytime soon.
I pay about 1200 € a month on my debt for my house, so I have about 2500 € left. Another 600 € go away for electricity, water, trash, internet, phone provider etc…
Leaves me with 1900 € left for the month. I’d say I spend about 900 € for food and household supply a month.
1000 € I save 500 € for my house for later. 250 € for vacation (3000 € in total a year) And 250 € for car.
It is going to take me about 5 years to save for a 15.000 € car. I don’t know how people buy BMWs, etc. I know I don’t earn that much but I need a car somehow my current car is breaking down and I got no money saved yet. Only about 1500 € cause I spent all my money on paving (had to be done) and my emergency saving wasn’t enough for the bill of the paving and other work on that area around my house.
I only save since 3 years cause I wasnt able to before.
I am not even ranting about the joke of a car I might get with 15.000 €. In my country I can’t even get the smallest Toyota with that. It’s a friggin’ joke that a Toyota Aigo or whatever it is called is going for 19.000 € (new) but whatever.
44.000 €/year is certainly decent money but definitely not “buy a (new) BMW” money. Many years ago I got a little promotional booklet from the guys at Car Talk, a public radio show in the USA. In it their conclusion was the best value for your money is to buy a used car that’s about 3-years-old and sell it after 6 years, assuming average driving (I think around 10.000 miles/year, or around 16.000 kilometers/year). The car will lose its most value in those first 3 years and lose value more slowly after that. The flip side is the car will have increasing maintenance costs and likely lose warranty coverage in that time, and if you have to finance the car the interest rates likely will be higher than buying new.
That’s a bit less true these days than it used to be, cars are retaining their value a bit longer.
I personally go for about 5-7 years old, and I keep it as long as the repairs cost less than the expected cost of a new one, averaged out over the expected life of the new one. That ends up being something like $1000-1500/year in repairs and depreciation, so that’s kind of my rule of thumb.
As a result, my cars are old (one’s almost 20 years old), but still quite reliable. I’m finally looking to replace them, not because repair costs are high, but because better options are available. Our family car chugs gas like there’s no tomorrow, and I can get a similar car w/ twice the fuel efficiency. My commuter isn’t particularly inefficient, but I could totally get an EV for it and never have to visit a gas station for that car again. So I’m looking for inexpensive replacement options for each.
However, I also have a garage, two cars, and am willing to do basic repairs on my car myself, so I’m a lot more tolerant of older vehicles than someone who only has one and doesn’t have the tools or space to do their own repairs.
The only time I recommend buying a brand new car was during COVID, when they were actually cheaper than gently used cars. Get something used that’s about half the price of when it was new, which should be somewhere in the 3-7 year mark, depending on the make. Most cars are expected to go 150-200k miles (250-300k km) without issue, so find something with relatively low miles (50-60k miles, or <100k km) and you should get way more than half the expected life for less than half the cost vs new.