CNN Money has an article that says you should buy a car and drive it for 15 years. They used data from Consumer Reports and cited some owners that have really racked up the miles on their cars.
http://money.cnn.com/2007/08/30/autos/cr_drive_200k/index.htm?postversion=2007083113
I think I need to bookmark this article and read it once per day. I shudder to think about how much money I’ve given away over the years by doing exactly what the article says you shouldn’t do. I owned my last truck for around 7 years and thought I was doing pretty well. I guess I should have driven it for another 8 years to really reap the benefits. The sad thing is that I took such good care of that truck that I have no doubt that it will make it 200,000 miles.
I guess my only hope is that I can keep my current truck for the next 15 years. Unfortunately I’m not all that happy with this truck but I’m going to do everything I can to keep it indefinitely. One of the reasons that I bought a Toyota Tacoma was because it has a good solid reputation for being reliable and holding it’s resale value. I better hope that turns out to be true over the next 14 years.
The good news is that we are still driving our Honda. It has 75,000 miles on it and is a 2000. We hope to keep driving it for a long time to come. My wife likes the car and it is comfortable so I don’t think it’s too unrealistic to get a total of 15 years out of it.
If, for some reason, we can’t keep both of our cars for the next 10+ years, I can tell you that we’ll be buying a good solid used car. I’d rather someone else take the first big depreciation hit.