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My name is Josh Rasheeds. I'm your host. Today we continue our series on how to buy a car with Episode 2. Today we're going to talk about how to decide what kind of car you should buy. Episode 1 we talked about deciding whether you should buy a car or not.

I tried to give you some of the reasons that, of course, you would want to buy a car. I tried to also give you some counter arguments as to some of the good reasons to avoid buying a car. I think if you listen to that episode and you go through some of the reasons, you'll figure out what's right for you.

And recognize that what's right for you today might change in the future. Right now it's right for me to have a car. Someday in the future I'll probably dream of a day when I don't have to have a car anymore. But that's Episode 1. Today though we want to talk about what kind of car you should buy.

And primarily I want to give you some things to think about so that you can make an intelligent choice. The reason this choice is important has to do with what I led off in the previous episode. Simply that purchasing a car and your decision around a car will generally be one of your more expensive decisions.

In most people's lives the biggest financial decision that they make is purchasing a house, buying and selling houses. And then the second biggest decision that most people make, or at least all at one time, is buying and selling a car. Of course there are bigger transactions that happen over time.

Most people will spend far more on their taxes than they do on a car. You'll spend more on a college education than you do on a car. But in terms of a single decision, a car is generally a pretty important decision. Especially in those early years. When you are older, when you have millions of dollars around, you can buy and sell a car and you don't need to worry about the cost.

But if you are watching your pennies and if the cost of the car is a relevant factor in your life, then you want to think carefully and buy the best kind of car for you. Because once you make that decision and once you purchase it, there's a whole lot of friction involved in getting out of it.

Buying a car is a decision that comes with a lot of friction, generally speaking. You have to go and you have to find the car. That takes quite a lot of time. Then you have to decide on it, you have to get it titled to you, you have to pay the taxes on the purchase price, you have to get new insurance policies, etc.

It's a significant amount of time and hassle and money. And if you turn around and need to sell it a month later, there's a very good chance that you're going to be out of pocket quite a lot of money. Not always, but there's a good chance they will. So it behooves you to move carefully and thoughtfully when buying a car.

I'm going to separate into a follow-up show the question of buying a new car versus a used car. Because this show, meaning what kind of car you should buy, comes first and will guide even that decision. But we will talk in depth about buying a new car versus a used car.

But what I mainly want to talk about is simply how do you decide what kind of car to buy. Should you buy a small car, should you buy a large car, should you buy a certain type of car, an SUV, a van, a pickup truck, etc. Now certainly I'm not going to try to tell you what you should buy.

Of course for most people we all know that should be a minivan. If you want to hear my arguments on that, then go listen to episode 356 called "Your Next Car Should Be a Minivan, Here's Why". Now I'm not going to tell you what kind of car to buy, but I do want you to think about it and be thoughtful.

And you should do this thinking before you go and start looking at cars. Once you, at least in my experience, for me, once I go out and I start looking at stuff, I start looking at cars, I start looking at things, very quickly it's easy for me to forget all of the careful, thoughtful, intelligent, rational planning that I had previously done.

Because I get a little buying fever, I really like the way this one smells, the way this one feels. And while those decisions are indeed important and worth considering, you want to start with a clear head, and you want to start with a sheet of paper and say, "Here is what I need, here is what I want." In life, the greater clarity you can have on what you need and what you want, the more quickly you will accomplish it.

Most people go through life being open to whatever comes their way and not really ever deciding what they need or want out of their life, in any aspect. But if you can become the kind of person who says, "Here is what I need and want," and you can do that in every aspect of your life, then you can put yourself in a situation where you can easily get more of those things in your life.

I don't think you should focus exclusively on needs. You will, of course, want to consider needs. But needs and wants are both perfectly valid things for you to consider. They're both perfectly valid things for you to pursue. So don't be scared away just because you say, "This is what I want." If you want a certain kind of vehicle, that's fine.

You don't need to justify it to anybody else. You don't need to justify it to your financial advisor, anybody else. A great skill in life is simply to identify the things that you want. And the fact that you want it is good enough reason for you to get it.

You deserve to have the things that you want. So figure out what it is that you want. I don't think you should be excessively practical. Many times in this situation, especially, people make a practical decision. They say, "This is what I should do," and "This is what is the practical decision," and they start to pursue the practical thing.

Well, practicality is important for some people. But at the end of the day, you deserve to have the things that you want. So make a list of your needs and your wants. And think about them rather holistically because they're going to guide you. So what are some obvious needs and wants that you want to consider?

At least for many people, the obvious first one is size of vehicle. For me, it's number of seats. This is an important thing for many people. I have four children, so I have a family size of six. That automatically means that if my family is going to be together, I need a certain class of vehicle.

There's still a range of decisions that can be made there. Do I want a minivan with seven seats or eight seats? Do I want a bigger van with 12 seats or 15 seats? Do I want an SUV with seven seats, etc.? But the number of seats that I have is going to drive it.

On the other hand, if you are a single person or you're buying a car that's only intended for use by a single person, you have a lot more flexibility. But don't immediately rush and assume that just because you're a single person, you automatically should choose a small vehicle. While in a moment I'll make the argument for a small vehicle from an efficiency perspective, I think it's wonderful to have a large vehicle.

I myself have always enjoyed having or at least having access to various vans, and I have found that they have been a great benefit to my social life. When I was in college, I had a large conversion van that I borrowed from my parents on occasion. I had an SUV that I drove.

I had access to other people's cars, and that was really nice for my social life, that it generally meant that I had a vehicle that was big enough to put all my friends together. Looking back now, if I had to redo it, I would want to do the exact same thing.

I get a little nervous giving that idea to my potential children, meaning as they get older, because I do worry now as a parent about the risk of a distracted driver getting into a car accident with a vehicle full of passengers. But I hope that perhaps my children will be responsible enough to handle it.

And in fact, I think that it's one of the things that I was grateful for, that for the most part, I was generally a pretty safety-conscious driver, and so I felt good about trundling my friends around. Having a large vehicle in high school, having the ability to carry a bunch of friends around, can make a big, big difference in the kinds of friends that you can have and the kinds of activities that you can do.

And even if you are an individual, just simply having the space and having the ability to cart people around can greatly enhance your social life. You'll notice that I'm obviously going to major on the things that are important to me. For me, size of vehicle is a big deal.

It's extremely important to me to have space in the cabin because I like the ability to carry lots of people with me. I like to have lots of friends. I like to have lots of family members, and I like to be able to do that. On the other hand, some people consciously avoid it for that reason.

I had friends who had a pickup truck and got rid of their pickup truck because they were tired of people asking them to move, help move. And so they drive a small car. "Well, I'm sorry. I just can't help you. I can't do much for you." So consider that.

Size may also come into play when you think about the capabilities that your vehicle may have. One of the things that I appreciate about larger vehicles is that they're relatively easy to sleep in. Meaning if you're the kind of person who likes to have road trips, likes to have adventures, having a vehicle that's big enough to comfortably put a bed in can be a real boon to your personal sense of adventure.

This is kind of one of the weird things I'm into, but I find it a tremendous benefit. And to give you an idea, this is something that you can do at various points in your life. A number of years ago, I actually had some business in some of the western states in the United States, and I needed to be in three different states.

And I had a short period of time, like four or five days, and I needed to cover basically three states, which the western states are huge. It didn't make any sense to fly. The flying connections didn't work, and the tickets were expensive, so I decided to drive. So what I did was I think I flew into Salt Lake City or something like that, and I rented a minivan.

It was a Dodge Caravan. I went to the local Walmart, bought an air mattress, put an air mattress in the back of the minivan, folded the seats down flat, put an air mattress into the back of the minivan, rented a cheap sleeping bag. It was winter, so I needed good bedding.

Bought a cheap sleeping bag, and I spent whatever my trip was under a week traveling in that minivan. I think I put something like 3,000 miles on it over the course of that several days of traveling. And I love that style of travel. I love it because you can go and be where you want to be.

You don't have to worry about hotel reservations. You don't have to worry about where you are. And that's a real benefit that a minivan has that other vehicles don't have. The minivan is wonderful for camping in and sleeping in because you can turn the air conditioning on when it's hot and the heating on when it's cold.

It's just fantastic. So you can do it with a rental. Of course, you can do it with your own vehicle. When I was younger, I remember I was so inspired by this old guy that my family knew who had an old Volkswagen combi van. And he was a single guy, computer programmer, didn't drive that much, but he always kept this van.

And he always had the back made up into a camper van. He had a bed back there, a basic stove, etc. And he would volunteer with the Boy Scouts. And so he would go and just sleep in his van at the Boy Scout camps. And so even if you don't need the size for you personally on your commute, you might enjoy having a larger vehicle.

You should think carefully about doing that. Let's make the argument for the smaller vehicle, then we'll come back to that. On the other hand, there are good arguments as to choose a small vehicle. The obvious arguments are ease of driving, ease of parking, and efficiency, meaning fuel mileage, lower costs, expenses, etc.

Easier to get around. To me, the more compelling of these is the ease of driving, ease of parking. If you are living in a big city or you're commuting or you're constantly parking in large parking lots, etc. You live in a place where the tradition and the culture is for narrow streets, small parking spaces, etc.

Then you'll enjoy the simple convenience and flexibility of a small vehicle. And that daily ease of use will be worth it to you to have. So you'll choose a small vehicle, high visibility, etc. What about the efficiency? Efficiency does matter. And I think that you should choose, if you're trying to make a financially smart choice, you should generally choose the most efficient vehicle that will accomplish your other purposes.

But there are diminishing returns with regard to efficiency. And if you choose efficiency over all your other factors, you might wind up not having the vehicle that you genuinely desire to have. You buy a small car because it gets you to work cheaply. But then you're so frustrated that you don't have a nice four-wheel-drive vehicle to take out to the lake every weekend, which is what you really want.

So you wind up buying two cars. You wind up having a four-wheel-drive vehicle that gets you to the lake on the weekend, or out in the backcountry, and then your small car for commuting to work. That might work in some cases, but generally, whenever I do the calculations, it's usually less efficient.

It's usually more efficient just to have the higher vehicle, pay the higher fuel costs for it, and just maintain one vehicle instead of maintaining two vehicles, just so you have a more efficient vehicle. If you, and years ago in the archives, probably in the first hundred episodes, I carefully went through some analysis on this.

But basically, I don't think financially it really ever makes much sense for you to upgrade cars for the purpose of efficiency. Every time I do the calculations for someone and they say, "Listen, I've got a vehicle that's getting me 15 miles per gallon. Should I upgrade to a newer car, a more expensive car, or something in order to get a vehicle that gets 35 miles per gallon?" You would think that that is a big, big savings.

But if you actually run the math on it, for many people, and I think clearly a majority of people, you're not going to get those savings back to upgrade to a more expensive vehicle just for gas mileage. That doesn't make sense. Financially, most people don't drive that much in order for it to make sense.

That said, if you're choosing a vehicle and you have the choice between vehicle A that satisfies all of my needs and wants and costs me $50,000 and is very efficient, and vehicle B that satisfies all my needs and wants and costs me $50,000 and is less efficient, then of course efficiency is something worth getting.

So you'll want to consider that. But small vehicles, at least for me, they've never matched my needs and wants. They may match yours, so consider that. If you say, "I'm never going to move. I'm never going to do those things. I'm never going to need the space. I'm never going to cart all my friends around.

I just want a vehicle that's small and easy to park," go for it. But you will have the lifestyle decisions that come along with it. So think about the size of the vehicle that's important for you. Think about the capabilities of the vehicle that you desire to have. You'll notice that I didn't say, "Do you have a vehicle that can get you down the road at a safe speed?" Virtually any vehicle in today's world can get you down the road at a safe speed.

It would be comfortable. We live in a golden age of vehicle manufacturing. You can buy for a very reasonable price vehicles that are fast, that are efficient, that are safe, that are comfortable, that are quiet, that are reliable. It's just wonderful. It's never been better than it is right now.

But you might have other capabilities that are important to you. You might want a vehicle with great traction, whether it's four-wheel drive, all-wheel drive, etc., because that's useful for you. You might want a vehicle that is large enough for you to carry your dog comfortably with you and your other stuff.

You might want a vehicle that you can sleep in. You might want a vehicle that can go really fast. You might want a vehicle that can put the top down because that gives you the joy of a Sunday afternoon drive or fits your weather patterns, etc. Make a list of any capabilities that you desire the vehicle to have and then make sure that you're choosing the capabilities that are appropriate for you and for your lifestyle.

It's well worth being this. When you're planning and when you're deciding, that's the time when you can make your list of everything that you want. If you want to give something up later, do it later, but at least have it on your list of all the capabilities, all the features that you want.

I split out capabilities and features because features are a separate set. Here with features, I would say specific things that the vehicle has. I've become a big fan of active safety measures on a vehicle. It was the normal course for people as they go through life. Today, safety is very important to me.

I want a vehicle that has not only good crash test ratings, but I want a vehicle that has good active safety features. By active safety features, I mean emergency braking if the vehicle senses an obstacle ahead. It has automatic cruise control. It's such a pleasure to use a vehicle that has a radar system where you can just tell it how far you want to be from the car in front of you and sit back and relax and it controls it automatically.

All of those active safety features, I think, are well worth having if you care about your life and the life of your passengers because they save lives. They save your life potentially and they save lives of others around. I worry about being a distracted driver and hitting someone, hitting a pedestrian or something like that.

If I can get a car that has pedestrian avoidance or will stop the car automatically if it senses a person in front, that really appeals to me very significantly. There may be other specific features that are unique for you. I'll just give an example. I'm physically much larger than my wife is, and so we have completely different profiles of seat position, mirror position, etc.

So having a vehicle that records the seat position, the mirror position, and all of that stuff based upon driver one or driver two is a real daily nice thing to have. You might live in a snowy climate and you definitely want heated seats or something else. So think about all the features that you want and make a list of them.

Because especially as we get to the new versus used, this may be a deciding factor for you. Talking about active safety features, for example, things that are important to me. If I go out and I want to buy a car that has all of the latest active safety features, that'll be hard for me to do with a vehicle that's, say, more than five or ten years old.

And so if I decide that for me this is an essential feature that I definitely want, that's going to push me in the direction of new or almost new. And then I have to think from there about the particular decision that's right for me. But I'm not going to go and choose a 15-year-old car just because that's a frugal option.

Those features and your features may be similar. If you want a vehicle that has a certain kind of electronic gizmo or a certain kind of modern thing that makes it comfortable for you, then you'll want to consider that. Next, think about the fanciness of the car. You'll want to consider carefully how nice of a car do I want.

There can be good reasons for you to want a very fancy car and there can be good reasons for you to want a not fancy car. Sometimes you want a car that looks nice because it makes you proud, and so you want shiny paint, a fresh look, fresh appearance, a car that's physically attractive and desirable for you because it makes you feel good.

I believe you should pay attention to those things. Many people go through life and they drive a car they don't like, and just like kind of getting a new pair of shoes or a new set of clothes, swapping out your car into something that you enjoy being in, enjoy seeing the world in, enjoy being seen in.

These can be good features for you and you can appreciate having a nice and fancy car. On the other hand, sometimes fanciness is a disadvantage. For me, while fanciness can be useful in some cases for my image and the way that I present myself to the world, I get a little bit annoyed with having children who destroy everything.

I get a little annoyed by having a fancy car. I love being an active and kind of adventurous family, and I want a vehicle where when we go to the beach and I got four sandy, muddy, dirty children who are all wet and covered with sand and whatnot, and two dogs, it's no big deal.

We just hop in the car. I don't worry about it. It is a mark in favor of leather seats as a feature, but it's a mark against having a particularly fancy vehicle because I don't like destroying stuff. If I have a brand new fancy car, then I'm not going to feel good about that kind of treatment to the vehicle.

Now, what about choosing a vehicle that is fancy? Frequently, that can be required of you. There are many people who are involved in sales or project management or something who as part of their compensation package, they receive a car allowance, and they'll get an extra amount of money that's available to be used to pay for a car.

The requirement is, however, that the car has a certain newness about it. It's required to be sufficiently new and fancy that the employing company is not embarrassed by the vehicle that its representatives happen to be driving. So you might need to choose a vehicle that is fancy. I think this is also important for you to think of when it comes to the image that you want your vehicle to give off about you.

As with many other decisions in life, the car that you drive is going to reflect on your overall image. This is a sensitive and difficult subject to talk through because people certainly do make a lot of financial blunders when thinking about image. But you do need to be conscious of image.

And you need to say, "What image or what air or what impression is my vehicle going to give to others about who I am, the kind of person that I am, the kind of capabilities that I have, etc." And you want to choose a vehicle that is congruent with the kind of image that you want others or the kind of impression that you want other people to have of you.

This stuff matters. It's annoying. And I have been annoyed by it for many years. But as I have grown in maturity, I stop worrying about the way that I wish the world would be and I just kind of accept the world the way that it is. And while we shouldn't judge a book by its cover, judging a book by its cover is actually a pretty reliable indicator that allows you to make quick decisions in a world of far too many books that you can ever meet.

I can promise you judging a book by its cover is a useful technique. I buy a lot of books. And I buy a lot of books that I can't flip through. And so I judge the books by their cover and it's pretty reliable. We can say you shouldn't judge a man by the clothes that he wears or the shoes on his feet.

But the reality is the choices that a man makes about the clothes that he wears and the shoes on his feet present something about that man. It tells you something about him. The clothes that a person wears tell you a lot. It tells you a lot about what they do or don't do, the kind of person that they are, the kind of things that they engage in, and the kind of things that that person values.

Now, they're not prescriptive, which is why I think we -- or they're not -- how to express it? There's a reason why we have the saying, "Don't judge a book by its cover." But it's trying to reflect a truth to say that it is important to look inside the book.

In the same way, we have a saying or we would understand, "Yeah, you shouldn't judge a man exclusively by the clothes that he wears." You should try to get to know him, find out who he is, find out what's going on. Just because he looks a certain way doesn't mean that he automatically has a certain character.

But in a world where you don't have the ability or time to sit down and spend time talking to every single person, you're going to judge, you're going to stereotype, you're going to categorize people based upon the way that they present themselves. And so you need to pay attention to these signals, to these clues, and look and see, "Is there a way that I can manage these things appropriately?" And there are times in which you want to manipulate these factors either up or down.

And you want to choose to present yourself in a way that is intimidating or not intimidating. You want to choose to present yourself in a way that gives you a certain air or it presents you as not having a certain air. And so the same thing should apply to your car.

The reason that this analysis is especially tricky with regard to a car though is that often the price tag is so much higher. So if you want to upgrade your wardrobe, generally speaking, while you could spend thousands, several hundreds of dollars can be well employed and dramatically transform really any wardrobe.

But when you move into the space of a car and you're trying to choose a car that presents yourself in a certain way or gives off a certain image, then it's harder to do because generally you're in the range where tens of thousands of dollars are involved. And those tens of thousands of dollars can be depreciating very quickly and there can be a whole lot of debt associated with the purchase.

And so you can make big mistakes fairly quickly. So how do you resolve this? Here's my answer. Think about the kind of person that you wish to be. Think about the kind of person that you personally want to be. And form, with as great a degree of clarity as possible, form an image of the kind of person that you hope to be.

I can see this about myself. I can think about my ideal self. Who is the man that I desire to be? And then ask yourself, what kind of vehicle would that man drive? What kind of car would the guy that I desire to be drive? And often there will be a fairly obvious result.

And if it's not a specific make or model, just say what would be the expression that that man would give off? What would be the features that he would have? I'll give you an example from when I was younger. My issue, I mentioned this years ago when I did my minivan show, I've always thought and questioned myself about the topic of whether I think that a 20-year-old guy should drive a minivan.

And I'm torn by this incredible conflict between the practicality of the reasons that I love a minivan with the complete lack of sex appeal of a minivan. And I think to myself, do I genuinely think that a 20-year-old guy should drive a minivan? And when I think back, when I think about the answer to that, all I need to do is to say, well, let's pretend I were again a 20-year-old guy.

What kinds of things would I want to be presenting? What kind of person would I wish to be? And the conflict comes down to do I want to be a person who is attractive, especially attractive to potential mate? Or do I try to, and what am I trying to lay off, to set off, what image am I trying to present?

So on the one hand, I can say, well, a minivan lacks a significant amount of sex appeal. It's not something that's generally attractive to young women. It's kind of a weird thing if I were a 20-year-old guy driving a minivan. That would be a little bit strange. And I wouldn't want to put any obstacles in my place.

But on the other hand, I would like to attract a woman who wouldn't judge me by my car. And I would like to attract a woman who is not just interested in superficial things. So flipping from a minivan to, say, a red sports car, that also wouldn't fit me.

Just talking about me, it might fit you, just it wouldn't have fit me at 20 years old. So what is that balancing act? Where is that better solution? And the answer would be I would find some kind of other vehicle that would satisfy those interests and adventure and would also satisfy my appreciation of practicality.

It might be a nice SUV that gives me a lot of the benefits of the minivan that I like, but is not quite as bland and boring and unattractive. It might be a nice pickup truck. It might be something, it might just be a nice car, whatever it happens to be.

But I would try to find something that is not too boring, but is also not too ostentatious, not too loud. I myself am not the kind of guy who pines for a red sports car. Maybe in 20 years I will, but today and at 20 years old I was not that kind of guy.

And I think the same thing could be done for you. I'm using an example that is a real example, but I'm trying to say think about the same thing for yourself. You're not trying to find a boring vehicle, right? Driving a boring Econobox might not light your fires. And I think there's a great error often in financial advice where we feel that somehow we have to make the practical decision all the time because we have to get as rich as possible.

I think that's silly. Money is for enjoying and money is for enhancing the kind of lifestyle that we wish to have. But we're not trying to make a stupid decision. And so the choices are not always between either I drive a boring car and I make a wise financial decision or I drive a great car and I make a dumb financial decision.

There are ways that you can find and thread the middle. In the previous episode I talked a little bit about signaling theory. That's basically what this is. What signals are you trying to send to people to identify yourself as being appropriate for them? What signal is a young man trying to send to a young woman to say I am the right kind of guy?

I'm not boring. I'm interesting. I'm adventurous. I'm fun. But I'm also not stupid. I'm not ostentatious or too flashy. What are the signals that you're trying to send? If you're a young woman what kind of signals are you trying to send? If you are in a new job what kind of signals are you trying to send?

And those signals are extremely important. So your vehicle should satisfy those signals. And here's my advice on how to get around them if some of them annoy you. Because this is the thing that I have changed my mind on very grudgingly over the years. In the previous episode I shared with you how I was the weirdo who rode his bicycle to work.

I cared a lot about efficiency and economy and whatnot. I drove old cars because they were frugal so I could get richer. And in hindsight I don't think that I made the wisest choice. I should have made a different choice. But I'll tell you where I think, how I think you can bring these things together and satisfy what you're trying to do.

And it has to do with breaking the mold. Meaning not fitting easily into either mold. If you're the kind of person who fits very comfortably into the, say, economy car mold and you say this is me, this reflects who I am, this reflects who I genuinely am and who I genuinely want to be, go for it.

If you're the kind of guy who reflects the supercar or the sports car and you say this is me, this reflects who I am, who I genuinely am, go for it. But there are a lot of people who are like me who don't really see themselves as either of those and you're trying to navigate this.

So let's begin with a story. When I was a financial advisor I needed to buy a new car. And I came into, I myself came into the financial advice industry through the pathway of personal finance. I was super frugal, wanted to drive an efficient, inexpensive car. And I had a very cheap car that I drove a ton, it was reliable, but it was not impressive to anybody.

And I, because of my long exposure to personal finance, I felt good about myself. Because I said, listen, I don't put money in stuff that goes down in value, people shouldn't judge me by my car, I should save money and I make money, etc. But along the way my car started to finally have a few problems and I needed to sell it and get something bigger.

And I was torn, I was struggling with what do I do. Because I was driving a Honda Accord, an old one, and I knew that I needed to buy a fancier car. And I look around me and everyone's got Mercedes and BMWs and it's kind of the thing that as a financial advisor you drive a fancy car.

And I just thought, this isn't me. This is not me, I don't know what to do. And I was looking at several cars, looking at this really great used Mercedes that I found, it was a sports car, I was kind of excited by it. And I thought, what do I do?

And at the time I didn't know where to go, but I was a big student of Thomas Stanley, who was the author of his most well-known book, The Millionaire Next Door. I was a big fan of his lesser well-known books. He wrote a trio of books that were a big help to me called Marketing to the Wealthy, Networking with the Wealthy, and Selling to the Affluent, Marketing to the Affluent, and Networking with the Affluent.

And basically I took his books as one of my foundational texts for what to do. But I didn't know how to solve this car issue. Because I'm recognizing that I've got an image problem, but I'm not comfortable, I love the millionaire next door ethos, and I want to be the guy who does that.

So I wrote an email to Stanley, and I asked him what I should do, and I explained it. And his answer to me was, I should probably go see if I can find that email. And his answer was very succinct, and he said to me, he said, I think that what you should do is have the kind of vehicle that most wealthy people have, which is a large full-size SUV.

And basically he said that virtually all wealthy families will have various fancy cars, but they'll usually have at least one large American full-size SUV. Most commonly a Chevy Suburban, or its GMC counterpart, or frequently sometimes something like a Ford Expedition. And I thought, brilliant, that's exactly right, that solves the problem.

And so I went out and I bought a Ford Expedition, which I had for a good number of years, and it was a perfectly fine car. And it solved my problem, where it allowed me to feel like I had, instead of strongly presenting the image that here I am as a financial advisor driving a frugal car, a jalopy of sorts, or here I am as a financial advisor driving a brand new Mercedes, trying to give that image.

Then I was finding a middle road that fit me, and it fit me because I was large, it was a comfortable car, I really enjoyed it, it wasn't fuel efficient at all, but it was a good vehicle for me. And over the years I've thought about that, I've realized that will often solve a lot of these image problems.

If you can choose something that just doesn't easily pigeonhole you. So here are my favorite vehicles for you to consider. For years I've been a fan of the Toyota Prius for this reason. Now today I don't think that this is as smart as it once was, but for years people would say, "What car should I get?" My answer was a Prius.

And the reason was simply that a Prius, it's hard to identify and pigeonhole you. I knew wealthy people that had Priuses because they cared about the environmental sustainability, they cared about presenting themselves as being greenies of sorts and being responsible, etc. And I knew poor people that had Priuses because they cared about the fact that they were inexpensive vehicles.

So you can go both sides. I knew there weren't a lot of adventurous people that had Priuses, most of it was kind of a dweeby car, but if you're not too worried about adventurous, it's a good option for many people. And it's a great frugal car, very efficient, very reliable, widely available, good features, etc.

But it's just hard to pigeonhole. If you're a Prius, no one knows whether you're buying and driving a Prius because it's efficient and you care about that or it's smart or it's because of your environmental consciousness. I think the vehicle that has far come to the forefront today and destroyed the Prius from this perspective is the Tesla.

Right now the Tesla brand is the perfect shape-shifting brand. Because it hasn't created, it's not pigeonholed the way that many other vehicles are. Tesla has this unique attractiveness to people who care about economy and efficiency, as well as people who care about speed, power handling, performance, etc. As well as people who care about safety, as well as people who care about the environment, as well as all of the above.

And so today, if a Tesla has the features and the size that you want, basically I think it's the perfect car at the moment. Because it doesn't have any of the negative baggage and it has still a good amount of the positive panache. And it's that perfect blue suit that you can dress up or dress down depending on the function, that you can make really flashy or you can make rather demure depending on the function.

So I think that is right now the perfect vehicle for many, many people. The next vehicle is just simply the class of vehicles, which has to do with SUVs. I have all kinds of arguments against SUVs. Most of which simply being that they don't really do anything very well.

They just kind of suck at, not suck, they're kind of mediocre at most things and they don't really do anything very well. If you want to carry a lot of people, a van is much more comfortable than an SUV. If you want great efficiency and great handling, a car or a van is better than an SUV.

If you want to haul a lot of weight, a pickup truck or a van is often better than an SUV. So SUVs do most things in a completely mediocre manner. However, SUVs from an image perspective or from a signaling perspective don't fall into certain categories. Many vans have a certain style that's associated with them.

Big vans have a certain thing that's associated with them. SUVs don't. There's a wide range of SUVs that you can choose from that will allow you to navigate these different options and make sense. Do you drive an SUV because they're just more comfortable than a car? They get you higher up, you can see better or what?

I don't need to go into more specifics. I do think that the big SUVs are awesome for those purposes. If you're a financial advisor, a big full-size Suburban can be a great vehicle. It can satisfy those errors and those problems that you're trying to work towards. Another vehicle that can work is simply a minivan.

Especially if you're of a certain age, then people understand why people have minivans. While that whole anti-minivan bias has waned a lot in the recent years, it's still a little bit out there, but at least everybody understands. As long as you're not super young, I think you can have a minivan and people just assume, "He's got a minivan because he's got children." They don't care and they don't pigeonhole you as being any of a certain social class or of a certain scale, etc.

It just can work. The other option is there are sometimes some brands that have quirky personalities that can fix these image issues for you without necessarily exposing you to something that you don't want. What do I mean? From time to time, a brand comes along and it's really, really impressive in terms of its value.

I remember the first time I started to see this back when I was in the financial advice business in the late 2000s when the Genesis brand that Hyundai launched came out. I guess it was their second Genesis, made a big splash. I had several coworkers who traded in their big BMWs for a Genesis because it had all of the luxury features that they wanted, but it was a way better value proposition than their BMWs.

It looked sharp. The vehicle just looked so good, especially at that time. Today it still does. I recently saw some again. The vehicle just looked so good that it hadn't established itself as, "This is a brand that should be appreciated or unappreciated." It was effective. Other times, you can find these brands that fit in through the middle.

We mentioned Tesla, but there are other brands where, for example, the Mini Cooper brand or the Mini brand or the MG brand or the Fiat, some of these brands that come into a marketplace and they're not super well-known locally. People just buy them because they're quirky cars that they like.

Think about that as well and see if there's something that would allow you to have the vehicle features that you want and to allow you to have the image that you want as well. I've spent quite a bit of time on this question of image because this is, I think, a more slippery one than features and capabilities.

Those things are pretty much check a box. This is something that I care. This image thing, though, I believe simply gets short shrift in financial conversations. There's too much of a focus or emphasis on practicality. A lot of times when you get financial advice with regard to a car, people ignore this particular issue.

That's why I'm spending quite a bit of airtime here on it. I think it matters. I don't think it's everything. You can be very successful in business. You can be very successful in a company and drive a wacky car. No question about that. But it is something that you should consider.

You can be successful in business and have all kinds of eccentricities. You can be smelly. You can dress poorly. And if you're sufficiently smart and you're a sufficient genius or you have sufficient resources, people will put up with it. Here I think of Steve Jobs who was famous for his body odor for many, many years.

But he was sufficiently smart that people put up with it. It didn't work out for him as much as well as people would like. If you read his biography and you think about what he faced, at the end of his life he was the golden child with the success of Apple.

But there was a significant period of his career where he was fired from the company that he started. He had very few friends and he was a significant failure. And his eccentricities strongly contributed to that. It just simply made him hard to work with. Now, can you take a man out of his eccentricities and is he still the same man?

Would Steve Jobs have been the same guy if he didn't have his predilection for body odor and sandals and kind of weird stuff? Who knows? I can't answer that. But it seems obvious to me that those eccentricities put up unnecessary obstacles and make it unnecessarily difficult for other people to work with you.

And you have to work really, really hard to overcome them. Geniuses can overcome them. But there are a whole lot of us who are not geniuses. We might not be incompetent but we're kind of that middle of the road people. And so we want to think thoughtfully. We want to be careful to position ourselves for success in as many ways as possible.

And this is one of those factors. Let me give one more metaphor to drive the point home. Let's talk about physical attractiveness. You and I can't control the innate level of physical attractiveness that we have. We may not be able to control our bone structure. We may not be able to control the color of our skin.

But we can make a significant impact on our attractiveness towards other people by being very thoughtful and careful and controlling the things that we can control. We can control our body odor. We can control our personal presentation. We can control how the kind of clothes that we wear and choosing a clothing style that is attractive for us and flattering for us.

We can control our manners and the way that we speak to others and our kindness and the way that we present ourselves. Those are things that we can control. And so while we can look and say, "Look, here comes some guy who's just won the genetic lottery and he can show up to a party and be an uncouth boor and doesn't care at all about what he put on and he's totally attractive," you and I may not have that ability.

But we need to play into the strengths that we have. And a guy of middling attractiveness or even of low attractiveness who is careful and thoughtful about his manners, who's careful and thoughtful about his dress, chooses a clothing style that's flattering for him, etc., can make a big, big improvement in his social life, his social chances in the world, the types of promotions that he gets, the kinds of jobs that he can be qualified for, etc.

A vehicle from an image perspective is part of that. It is part of that. And it's part of that visible wardrobe that you wear that projects who you are to other people. And as such, it deserves to be considered. So I've spent half this show on this topic because it's something that I resisted for very long.

But when I finally came to see it as just simply an expression of clothing, then I have come to the position that I've come to today. When I was heavily involved in the personal finance world and I believed in efficiency above all else, I thought to myself, "People shouldn't judge me by the car that I drive.

That's silly. And if they really want to know, they should ask me how much money I have." And so I ignored it. And I think it harmed me. I believed at the time about dressing well. I believed at the time about brushing my teeth and combing my hair properly, etc.

I believed at the time that those were good things, but I didn't believe that the car was an expression of my wardrobe. I believed the car was an individual decision that I could make. I now believe the car is simply an expression of your wardrobe. And while you need to make sure that you have the basic features that you want, the vehicle, the size that you want, that gives you the capabilities in your personal life, etc., then it needs to be acknowledged that there is a component of it that reflects upon your image and your presentation, etc.

So consider those things and be thoughtful. There's no reason why you have to be foolish, but you can choose something that will satisfy those and take image into account. Don't ignore image. The last thing to consider is what's right for me now versus what's going to be right for me later.

A car, ideally, should be a fairly long-term decision. Because the acquisition costs are substantial, because the time required, the decision-making, energy, etc. is substantial, ideally, you want to have a car for a significant amount of time, which means taking forethought for what you wish to do in the future.

You don't have to do this. If you want to swap out your car every two years, you can. I don't think that's necessary, certainly not necessary, and I think that's often something of a wasteful practice. It's certainly, generally, a very expensive proposition to swap out your car very frequently, because you're always operating a vehicle in its most expensive curve.

And one of the best ways that you can mitigate an expensive car purchase is to simply stretch out your period of ownership. If you want to buy a new car, in many cases, I would say go for it. If you want to buy a new car and have it be a financially fantastic decision, the way that you do that, from a measurement of total cost of ownership perspective, is keep the car for a very long time.

If you buy a new car and you keep it for a very long time, virtually all of the downsides of buying a new car disappear. So, think about a vehicle that is right for today, and think about a vehicle that will be right for tomorrow. So, go back to those features, needs, wants, size, capabilities, fanciness, etc., and just reflect on those things that are important for you today, and those things that may be important for you three years from now.

I feel silly even including this in the list, but I've learned that many people don't think about it. I guess the obvious example is often people having children, and they got one child, and so they rush out and buy a vehicle that has four seats, and they don't think they might have three children, or some version of that.

And I think to myself, "Didn't you think that you might need a few more seats, and now you've got to sell this vehicle that just wasn't appropriate for you because it's unpleasant, and it just doesn't work for you?" So, think about that. Now, some of those lessons are harder to acquire until you have them, right?

This is the thing that parents will go through. This is why minivans are so popular. People can't often understand why minivans are so popular until they have children, and they realize that one of the big features that make minivans awesome is the sliding doors so your kids don't slam the car into the car next to them.

It's the kind of thing that people without children never think about, and people with children are very conscious of. And so, or the physical contortions that you have to go to to buckle a child in a child seat. A lot easier if you've got a big, wide sliding door versus if you have a cramped back seat that you have to stoop down and contort yourself to get your torso around the door to buckle the child's latches.

So, you may not have enough practical experience to know exactly what you want five years from now. And I don't think that you should think super long term because the future is simply not that predictable. But you want to at least be conscious of it. And if there's going to be a change in the future, it shouldn't be a surprise to you.

You should imagine where your life is likely to go in the coming years and try to make a vehicle choice that's going to allow you to own this vehicle for a good long time. If you can make a vehicle choice that really fits you, and it's a wonderful car that fits you in so many ways, and it's something that you'll be happy with for a long time, that's probably your best move, both in terms of personal satisfaction as well as financially.

I've watched a lot of people buy a car that was less nice because they thought, "Well, this is good and this is the money that I've got." And then a few years later, they've got a little bit more money and they're looking around and wishing for a little more luxury in their life and they swap out the car and upgrade.

And as kind of an obsessive calculator of efficiency, I look at it and I say, "Why didn't you just buy the nicer car in the beginning?" It would have been better for you instead of getting the cheapest thing, just go ahead and get the thing that's going to last you for a longer period of time.

Now let me balance that with saying, "Think about now versus later." What I mean is, plan for the life that you have, not necessarily the life that you think you might have in the future. And the way I think about it is this, I love to travel, I love to think about traveling, I love to plan travel, I love to plan ideas for trips of the perfect vehicle.

I love vehicle-based travel, overlanding, going out in the woods, traveling the world, etc. And so I somewhat obsessively consider what is the perfect vehicle. Well, the perfect vehicle has to have definitions. I love the big, huge, European overlanding trucks. I think they're so awesome, they've got these huge trucks, they build a big, comfortable house on the back, etc.

But then I think, "No, I would never want one of those, what a hassle that thing would be, just give me something small and comfortable and I'll put a tent out, etc." And what I realized is simply, you have to go with the maxim that you should just simply buy the vehicle that is for the trip that you have right now.

And in some cases, that might be a big four-wheel drive vehicle, in other cases, it might be a very fuel-efficient vehicle. But buy the vehicle for the trip that you have now. So, don't just always think aspirationally, don't always think, "Well, this is where I really want to be in the future." Buy the vehicle that is right for now, for the lifestyle that you're living right now.

If you're in the city, you're probably going to want a small car, if a car at all. You say, "Well, I want to be the guy that's not in the city." Great. When you buy a country house, put a country house car at the country house. But buy for the vehicle that you have now, or buy the vehicle for the life that you have now.

Don't worry too much about the aspiration. Hard to know exactly how to balance them. My hope is simply that in pointing out to you that both are important, you'll see that the right choice for you is fairly obvious. In conclusion, I want to give a couple of examples here.

If you think about these features and opportunities and things I've said, the right vehicle choice will probably emerge to be fairly obvious in most situations. It'll come out to be evident to you what the right vehicle is. What I mean is simply, if you're a rancher checking on your cows every day, you ain't buying a Toyota Prius.

Doesn't fit the bill. If you think about the lifestyle that you have and the kinds of things that you do and the kinds of things that you want to do, then the right car choice will be fairly obvious. Then, once you've decided on it, you'll be able to figure out what's the best way to buy it.

If you're a young male college student who lives on campus but needs a car for occasional excursions and most importantly weekend adventures with your friends, then having a nice four-wheel drive, seven-seat SUV would be a great fit. You don't drive much, the gas mileage is not that big of a deal because you're not commuting, but having the ability to load up three, four, five friends and go out to the lake or go up into the mountains or go into the backcountry on the weekend or go to the beach or whatever and have a great, comfortable road trip vehicle, that would be a perfect scenario for you.

If you commute a lot and you're a highly placed executive who's in a corporate environment, but yet you commute quite a bit, then getting a brand new Tesla would be potentially a perfect vehicle for you because it's efficient for carrying you, but it has a little bit of panache, a little bit of style, it reflects someone who's going places, etc.

If you're a family man and you live in the city, then a minivan will be an obvious thing for you. If you are a family man who lives in the country, then an SUV would be an obvious thing for you. You just go down the list. So the vehicle choice, once you think about your capabilities that you want, features, etc., fanciness, image, size will emerge.

And then that'll give you a short list of specific vehicle types, brands, models, etc. that you can then go to the marketplace and get a sense of pricing, get a sense of value, get a sense of features, etc. So that's step two. Basically, decide what kind of car you should buy based upon your needs, your wants, in every area, including size, capabilities, features, fanciness, image, and what's right for now versus what's right for later.

Thank you so much for listening. I will be back with you very soon with the next installment of this series.