Cheap Used Cars Sales

Q.I'm going to be moving to Texas for work and will be buying my first car there. I plan to stay there for about 3 years. The company is supplying a rental car for the first month, during which time i will have to find my own car. I'm looking for a cheap used car. I've been checking out Honda Civic's and Toyota Camrys on Yahoo autos and houstoncarfinder.com, and the cheapest prices i've been able to find come in at about $7000. My question: I would like to get a car for $2000-$4000, that will last me 2-3 years of driving in the city, and one which I won't have to fix often. Is it totally impossible to get a car in this price range at all? Why can't I find any cars in this price range on the internet? Will it be easier to find a car in this price range by looking through the local papers when i get there? Is it unreasonable to expect not to have to repair it often if i want it for only a few years and how much would repairs typically run? If I want a car for only a few years, and want to pay as little for it as possible, yet want it to be reliable what's the best way to go?

A.Which in your case is not too bad. A new Civic would have cost you $1000 in interest alone. Depreciation and higher insurance would be at least $2000 more. Total out of pocket expenses might have been $4,600 plus insurance plus your down payment. And, except for the down payment, you can pretty well count on getting the same thing next year. About the time you get it paid off (or maybe before), you can expect to buy... brakes and tires. Your used Civic cost less than $100 in interest (money you could have earned on the cash I assume you paid for the car.) You saved on insurance and your car may be now worth more than you paid for it because it has new tires and brakes. Your out of pocket expenses were $1100 plus (lower) insurance and your initial $2600. Next year you could easily get away for a couple hundred dollars or it could cost you a couple thousand. It can't get close to that $4,600 you would have paid if you had bought new. Even if the car burns to the ground tomorrow, it won't have cost you as much as a new car would have. Both cars incur fuel and maintenance expenses which are about the same over the long haul. So will repairs if you keep the new car long enough. One will give you the joys of new car ownership. The other is likely to be vexing at times but can still be a joy to own. If you drive both cars into the ground, cost, joy and vexation will tend to equalize. Some people are so prissy or status conscious or whatever that they have to buy a new car every two or three years. I don't know if you get what you pay for, but I do know you pay a lot for that.

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