How Much Car can I Afford Based on Salary.
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How much cars can you spend on? You can spend between 10 and 50 percent of your gross yearly income on a car. That’s a big range, we know, so if we had to set a rule, it would be this: Lower is better, but we recognizing personal finance.
You might spend extra only if you can securely pay cash for your vehicle and the kind of car you drive is essential to you. You can discover how much cars you can accord in our car affordability calculator below.
You can limit how much cash you spend on your car by:
- Saving up and paying cash
- Buying used
If you do both of these things, you’ll save thousands of dollars compared to financing or leasing a new car. This article, will
How Much Cars can I Afford Based on my Salary
1. Put at least 20 percent down
According to Edmunds, a new car loses 9 percent of its value the second you drive it off the lot. By the end of the first year, it’s lost 19 percent. (This is why buying used is the way to go.) If you put less than 20 percent down, you risk becoming underwater on your car loan meaning you owe more on the car than it’s worth almost immediately.
If you need to sell the car before the loan’s paid off, you’ll have to come up with the difference between the car’s value and the balance on your car loan. Ditto if you get into an accident and the car gets totaled.
2. The term of your car loan should be no more than four years
The longer the term of your loan, the more interest you pay. The longer your loan term, the longer you’ll have to meet your lender’s insurance requirements, which often means higher rates.
Plus, by the end of four years, your car will have lost a lot of its value, and you won’t want to still be paying it off.
Four years is the maximum most personal finance experts recommend. If you can swing paying off your car in three years, that’s even better. If you feel you absolutely must stretch your payments further, you could get a five-year loan, but never longer.
3. Your total car payment (interest, principal, and insurance) should not exceed 10 percent of your gross income
Your dream car isn’t worth having if your monthly payments eat up all the extra room in your budget. Staying below 10 percent means you’ll have money to put toward other things like an emergency fund, a down payment on a house, or a nice vacation.
How does the car Affordability Calculator Work?
The above car affordability calculator uses a conservative but solid assumption about how much cars you can afford. Whether you’re paying money or financing, the purchase price of your car should be no more than 35 percent of your annual income.
If you’re financing a car, the total monthly amount you spend on transportation your car payment, gas, car insurance, and maintenance should be no more than 10 percent of your gross monthly income. The calculator doesn’t ask for gas and insurance values but will begin to reduce the purchase price you can afford if the terms of your loan (interest rate and length) make your monthly payment exceed 10 percent of income.
Why is my amount so low?
Cars may be necessary transportation, but their quick depreciation means spending more than you have to on a car is a fast way to make your hard-earned money disappear unnecessarily.
A bank or car dealer will likely approve you for much more than your result on our calculator. But what the dealer says you can afford and what you can actually afford are very different. Remember, if you stop paying your car loan, the bank repossesses the car. Either way, they win.
The result of our car affordability calculator shows you a sensible amount to spend on a car. And yes, it might be far lower than you might think. But remember that the more money you spend on a car, the less money you have available for everything else housing, food, travel, entertainment, paying off debt, and saving.
Your car is one of your largest monthly expenses the lower you can keep that expense, the faster you’ll be able to build wealth in other areas.
Finally, before you get to buy a car you have to make up your mind on how much you have and much cars you can afford. The above steps will help you determine.
NG Team.
