I don’t think I’m cheap. I think I’m rational. The problem is that we’re living in a culture that has normalized irrational spending so thoroughly that restraint now looks like eccentricity.
When my wife and I talk about cars, the conversation always circles back to the same quiet tension. We both drive older Mercedes. Hers is a 2013 E350—comfortable, elegant, dependable, with navigation but no rearview camera. Mine is a 2005 E-Class that still has a cassette player. No screens. No sensors. Just a car that starts, runs, and does exactly what it was designed to do.
She wants something newer. I understand that. I wouldn’t mind something newer either. But then reality intrudes. Have you looked at the price of cars lately? What used to be a luxury purchase has quietly crossed into financial absurdity. Seventy thousand dollars. Eighty. One hundred. And that’s before taxes, insurance, interest, and the silent but relentless drain of depreciation that begins the moment the car leaves the lot.
💰 If I’m honest, I can’t justify it—not because we couldn’t technically afford it, but because I can’t explain why it would make sense given how we actually live.
So let’s strip the romance out of the car conversation and talk plainly. In our household, a vehicle is not a lifestyle statement. It’s not an identity marker. It’s not a rolling résumé. It’s a low-utilization transportation appliance. We are not commuters grinding ninety minutes each way. We’re not hauling equipment, clients, or crews. We’re not road-tripping weekly. By my own accounting, we’re in the car for short, local trips—visiting the grandkids, going to the store, eating locally on the weekend.
That’s it.
Which means the car spends most of its life doing nothing at all, quietly depreciating in the garage like a polite thief. 🕰️
📉 Depreciation is the part people don’t emotionally process. A new $80,000 or $100,000 Mercedes doesn’t merely lose value—it bleeds it. The first three years are the financial equivalent of pushing a grand piano down a staircase. You can finance it, lease it, or pay cash, but the outcome is always the same: real money converted into rapidly vanishing metal and software.
That’s why paying cash for a brand-new luxury car feels like putting $100,000 in the middle of the floor and lighting it on fire. And even that metaphor is generous, at least fire gives you heat. 🔥
The alternative most people choose is financing, but financing doesn’t make the decision smarter. It just anesthetizes it. This is the payment fallacy that defines modern consumption. People talk themselves into cars by shrinking the cost into a monthly number. “It’s only $1,200 a month,” they say—only—as if $14,400 a year, after taxes, on something that mostly sits still is disciplined behavior. That’s not budgeting. That’s sedation. 💳
I remember when car commercials showed the price of the car. Not the payment. Not the lease. The price. You were forced to confront the full weight of the decision. Somewhere along the way, that honesty disappeared. Today, cars aren’t sold as products. They’re sold as tolerable monthly discomforts.
🧠 At the same time, credit itself has been recast as virtue. Approval has replaced ownership as the status symbol. The ability to finance anything now trumps the ability to delay gratification—or even to say no. People celebrate credit limits and approvals as if borrowing were an achievement. In that environment, the most powerful financial decision of all—not buying—barely registers as an option.
This isn’t just a financial problem. It’s psychological. When people consistently convert a one-dollar purchase into a ten-dollar repayment obligation, the math isn’t unclear. The purchase is doing emotional work: validation, belonging, comparison, reassurance. Debt becomes a coping mechanism. And when appearances outrun facts, consumer debt stops being accidental. It becomes symptomatic.
There’s another layer most people never consider. Credit doesn’t just add interest—it inflates prices themselves. When borrowing is easy and widespread, sellers raise prices because they can. Artificial demand created by credit pushes values beyond what cash buyers would ever tolerate. Consumers lose twice: first by paying an inflated price, then by paying interest on top of that inflated price. Credit doesn’t just cost money. It distorts reality.
🚘 Cars are simply the clearest example of this madness. They depreciate. They sit unused most of the time. They require insurance, maintenance, registration, and storage. And yet we treat them as if they’re investments—or worse, as reflections of personal worth.
Zoom out far enough, and the picture becomes even clearer. Millions of people around the world—high-income, highly mobile people—have never owned a car. Not because they couldn’t afford one, but because ownership didn’t make sense. Dense cities figured this out long ago. Transportation shifted from ownership to access. Trains, taxis, walking, bikes, ride-share, and delivery services. Mobility without the burden. 🌍
That model is no longer confined to big cities. Even in suburbia, the rise of delivery services, Uber, and the slow march toward autonomous transportation is thinning the argument for expensive, low-use vehicles. We’re paying a premium to preserve a habit, not to solve a problem.
None of this makes my wife wrong for liking Mercedes. Taste is real. Comfort is real. Beauty matters. But taste doesn’t get veto power over math. The real question isn’t, “Can we afford it?” The question is, “Is this the highest-value use of our money given how we actually live?”
📊 From a purely rational standpoint, the answer keeps coming back the same. Keep what works. Upgrade only where there is a real functional gain. Buy used if you buy at all. Avoid payments when possible. Treat cars as tools, not trophies.
Ironically, the truly wealthy rarely obsess over cars. They obsess over optionality—flexibility, time, peace. Cars are just another thing to manage, insure, store, worry about, and explain.
So no, I don’t think I’m crazy for believing cars are becoming obsolete as personal assets. I think I’m early. The culture just hasn’t caught up yet. Most people are still financing nostalgia.
🔚 And here’s the quiet truth at the end of it all:
Nothing signals confidence quite like not needing to prove anything in the driveway.
Thank You & Call to Action 🙏
Thank you for reading this blog. I appreciate your continued support in raising awareness about the issues that impact our relationships, families, friendships, and the institutions and environments—political, social, and economic—in which we live and work. Please share this blog—and explore my other articles and videos—each one created to educate, empower, and uplift. Together, we can challenge the belief systems that hold us back and press forward into openness, love, consideration, and peace—opening doors of opportunity for all.
Subscribe to The Power Is Now TV to connect with me live every weekday, Monday through Friday, from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM PST, as we record television shows across the Power Is Now TV Network. As a subscriber, you can participate in live tapings, engage in real-time discussions, and connect directly with industry leaders.
Visit ThePowerIsNow.com to access real estate magazines, books, podcasts, television shows, and exclusive media content focused on homeownership, business, and wealth-building.
For personalized support, consulting, and advisory services in real estate, mortgages, business, and personal finance, visit EricFrazier.com to schedule a consultation and learn more about my work as your trusted advisor in business and wealth.
Schedule a consultation:
https://calendly.com/ericfrazier/real-estate-mortgage-consultation-clients
Eric Lawrence Frazier, MBA
Your trusted advisor in business and wealth
www.ericfrazier.com | www.ericfrazieruk.com
NMLS #451807 | CA DRE #01143484
