Not quite $3k, but I paid $4500 for a 2012 Chevy Sonic a year ago with a clean title, a bit over 50k miles and no real issues.
I brought it to the mechanic once for a check engine light and I had it back by lunch with a trivial fix for like $150, and other than that am just doing normal maintenance.
I could buy a Tesla or whatever if I wanted to without it really noticeably effecting my immediate position, but from the perspective of my car being an appliance that does its job, I see no reason to spend more than I did, at least until I can get something that I can go to sleep in and wake up 100s of miles away at a beach or ski resort.
There are other ways to incinerate 50k that I'd get more joy out of than buying a car, but even beyond that I'd rather just leave it all in investments to get my capital gains above my expenses as fast as possible.
If you had enough in capital gains to buy the car from just those gains, or if you are a person that is really genuinely going to get $50k worth of joy out of it and make enough that the expense won't add any stress then I would start to not be able to argue with it financially, but I think both of those are very few people.
I brought it to the mechanic once for a check engine light and I had it back by lunch with a trivial fix for like $150, and other than that am just doing normal maintenance.
I could buy a Tesla or whatever if I wanted to without it really noticeably effecting my immediate position, but from the perspective of my car being an appliance that does its job, I see no reason to spend more than I did, at least until I can get something that I can go to sleep in and wake up 100s of miles away at a beach or ski resort.
There are other ways to incinerate 50k that I'd get more joy out of than buying a car, but even beyond that I'd rather just leave it all in investments to get my capital gains above my expenses as fast as possible.
If you had enough in capital gains to buy the car from just those gains, or if you are a person that is really genuinely going to get $50k worth of joy out of it and make enough that the expense won't add any stress then I would start to not be able to argue with it financially, but I think both of those are very few people.