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Insurance needs?

If you buy a lower value car, collision becomes a bad deal. If you have a loan, you’ve no choice but to pay for collision.

Speaking of TV ads, any of you oldtimers remember when "9.9" was a big deal, advertised as a favorable rate on new car loans?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6eAXKpXggM

Can you borrow money on a car loan for almost free right now, though?

Honest question, because I have no idea what car loan rates are, I haven't had a car payment in quite a while.  But it seems to me rates are up lately?

Nobody is offering better than about 4.5% around here.  Our credit and debt-to-income ratio is amazing and I think that's about what I wound up getting.  Couple tenths of a point lower, maybe.  

That said, when I plugged it into a 5-year interest calculator, I'm paying like an extra $3500 for the vehicle, or something like that.  It's not nothing, and I'd rather avoid that deduction of my net worth, but it's not killer either.  Really, vehicle loans just don't last long enough for interest to really start killing you like it does on homes.  

Collision is cheap.

Liability is where the money is (we have $300K/$300K/$100K and an umbrella on top of that). That liability coverage is $600 every six months! No tickets. No accidents. No claims.

Collision/Comp on the wife's SUV is only $140 every six months.

Your situation is likely different than average. In most cases, it’s at least as much as liability if not more (although, paradoxically, adding more liability tends to be cheap).

Or the insurance market has pivoted relatively hard recently. 

INS is fairly evenly split for us:

2017 Sequoia
Liability (250K/250/100, umbrella not included) - $198
Comp - $230
Collision - $143


OTOH, my 18yo daughter as primary operator:

2021 Rav4
Liability - $401
Comp - $270
Collision - $335

That comp breakdown is interestingly high.

There are some pretty stellar deals right now if you're buying new. I think the Kia EVs I was looking at it's 0% and $3500 "Kia cash".

But...

I don't buy new.

Google tells me that interest rates on used cars for buyers with excellent credit are around 7%.  If correct, I definitely wouldn't consider that "nearly free money."

When someone is following me in a crowded parking lot in hopes of getting my spot when I leave, I like to pretend to get into a car one isle over from the one that we're in, then when they race around to the other side where they think I'm parked, I get into my car in the isle that they just abandoned and drive off before they can make it back around.