Thanks for sharing your thoughts .
Here’s a link to Edmunds where they show the expected maintenance and repair costs for a 2016 Camry: https://www.edmunds.com/toyota/camry/2016/cost-to-own/?style=200746617.
In Year 5, this Camry would be 10 years old, and the estimated cost of maintenance and repair is $2647. This is about 38% of the true cost to own of that car for that year.
Regarding your comment that you can save money by doing maintenance yourself, that’s one of my caveats — I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing that, but if you do, your costs will go down very significantly, shifting the balance to owning a used car.
As for the financing, I’m using Edmunds’ data for that, but only for the first 5 years of ownership. For owning a car for another 5 years, I remove the financing cost since you already own it. Either way, if you assume you can pay cash for the car, just apply that same cash to the more expensive purchase of the new car, and you’ll reduce the financing cost by the same amount.
Finally, if you buy a 10-year old car and keep it for 5 years, I suspect you’d see the same thing if not more so by buying new and keeping the car for 15 years. Unfortunately, Edmunds doesn’t show data for 10-year-old cars, so this will remain an untested assumption on my part.
