While stopped at a red light the other day, I looked around and noticed I was surrounded by expensive new cars. In front of me was a 2-year-old Honda SUV. Next to me was a Mercedes sedan. Behind that car was an Infiniti SUV. I drive a 2008 Prius that I bought for $5,000 in 2019 with a 36-month loan.
As a neurotic with an inferiority complex, I’m constantly taking stock of what everybody else has and how they got it. In this case, I wondered how all these people could afford these expensive new cars. I try to keep my Cost of Transportation to less than 5% of my monthly expenses. The small loan I took out to buy my Prius costs $130/mo. This is about 3% of my monthly net W2 (after-tax $). Insurance and gas takes my total monthly cost to about 4%. I have non-W2 income via real estate but I consider that a separate investment account that is used only to maintain the real estate and buy more investments.
For a minute, let’s pretend the Infiniti, Honda, and Mercedes drivers use the same 5% of W2 income metric that I use when planning to buy a car. I call this my 5% of Net Income Vehicle Frugality Philosophy. From there let’s figure out how much money they must make every month in order to afford their expensive vanity vehicles. Using the car makers’ websites, I calculated monthly payments to lease or finance a new car. I researched (googled) a high-end Infinity SUV, low-end Mercedes sedan, and Honda CRV. Below are my nonbacktested findings, hastily submitted to the reader before a requisite peer review.
Those are some fat paychecks. Every scenario except leasing the Honda would require you to make close to $150,000 per year or more in after-tax income, meaning your salary is closer to $200,000 or above. Investopedia tells me that only the top 10% of earners make over $150,000. What are the chances I was surrounded by three of these top 10% earners on my morning drive through a middle-class Cleveland suburb?
My Income Required to Purchase or Lease Fancy Vehicles chart leads me to believe the other drivers don’t subscribe to my 5% of Net Income Vehicle Frugality Philosophy. Further reflection on the last five parking lots I’ve been to leads me to believe that hardly anybody subscribes to my 5% of Net Income Vehicle Frugality Philosophy. Lastly, the internet is convincing me that literally nobody subscribes to my 5% of Net Income Vehicle Frugality Philosophy.
I’ll concede that 5% might be miserly. I hate driving, avoid it at all costs, and get no joy from any marginal improvement in my vehicle’s extras. My calculus is thus simple: What is the least amount I can spend to cheaply and reliably get from point A to point B for the next few years? The extra money I save goes towards things like vacations that have dramatic improvements in my well-being.
If you’re not willing to drive around in a total shitbox like I am, then, please, feel free to spend 10% of your income on a car. For god’s sakes, cap it at 10%.
Long intro notwithstanding, the point of this article isn’t to amaze you with my state-of-the-art excel tables. Rather it is to share an alarming story of someone who did not follow my 5% of Net Income Vehicle Frugality Philosophy, and even dared to brush off the internet’s 10% of Net Income Vehicle Frugality Philosophy. We’ll call him Jet Ski Foreclosure Guy. It is very important for you, dear reader, to make the connection that in another time, in another place he could easily be called Infinity SUV, Mercedes Sedan, or 2-year-old Honda SUV Foreclosure Guy.
His story begins with a funeral. Not a real funeral. Just a metaphorical one. This funeral occurred at the Cuyahoga County Courthouse and was for property parcel 012-XX-XXX in the form of a Sheriff’s Sale. Jet Ski Foreclosure Guy, the prior owner of this house, adhered to the 30% of Net Income Vehicle Profligacy Philosophy. This, by itself, may have been survivable. However, Jet Ski Foreclosure Guy also subscribed to the 35% of Net Income Recreational Watercraft Profligacy Philosophy. After paying for groceries and his mortgage, this left little to put aside for savings.
Am I engaging in loose suppositions about this man’s personal finances or had I subpoenaed his tax returns? Neither. After purchasing the property, I entered it to take stock of what I had acquired. In the closet I found photographic evidence of Jet Ski Foreclosure Guy’s reckless spending habits.
To protect his identity, I won’t share the photo here. Instead I hired an actor to portray the image in as real a reenactment as you’ll find this side of Lifetime TV.
Bro, there’s no way I’m losing my house. I just bought a jet ski!
Hyperbole and shenanigans aside, I did purchase a foreclosure at the auction and did meet the guy who used to own it. He did leave a photograph of himself that was definitely from the late 90s. In the photo, he was wearing a BuzzardFest t-shirt while posing in his driveway next to a nice truck, a boat, and a jet ski.
A month after I bought the house at the auction, the former owner was still living there, taking care of the place and hoping I would never show up. He tried to convince me he would be a great tenant and didn’t want to move and wouldn’t smoke in the house. He also blamed medical, and then job issues, for losing the house. While that might be true in some sense, I blame the truck, the boat, and, mostly, the jet ski for causing his financial distress.
If Jet Ski Foreclosure Guy had used my 5% of Net Income Vehicle Frugality Philosophy he would have had cash to weather the health crisis, and he’d still own his former home. Stories like his happen all the time but they aren’t celebrated on Instagram or Facebook. They’re buried in places like a banal foreclosure proceeding at the county courthouse.
I think about Jet Ski Foreclosure Guy all the time while driving around in my 13-year-old Prius, ashamed by the glint and glitter of the new cars that surround me. I also think about him while cruising the depths of Lake Erie in my kayak, fighting against the wakes of Bayliners and Boston Whalers, using an umbrella to protect my eyes from the jet skis’ discharge. I think about him too while my wife and I house hack a duplex instead of spending 30% of our gross income on a 6-bedroom house with a pool.
Everything I do now is to make the probability incredibly low that I ever wind up like Jet Ski Foreclosure Guy. My wife and I will stack assets on our balance sheet like Rich Dad, Poor Dad said until those assets allow us to level up our lifestyle without ever having to risk giving any of it back.
Before you sign that new Audi lease or max out your DTI on a big dumb house, please, consider the fate of Jet Ski Foreclosure Guy.