Do you really need that fancy sports car? Questions like this one plague all of us when we find ourselves with any amount of money and can finally afford the expensive toy we always wanted. But for some people, the answer isn’t so black and white once they get to ask it.
What should you do if you have the money for the car of your dreams but find yourself struggling to commit?
The Question
A user posted a question on the subreddit r/fatFIRE, a community for those dedicated to wealth generation and early retirement, regarding this exact problem. The author is 35 years old, has over $15 million in assets, and lives in a very expensive neighborhood with two children. He says he’s always wanted to buy a nice sports car but cannot ever commit to the decision. He gets a thrill out of looking at car listings online, but his wife isn’t particularly interested in them and he can’t ever justify the decision in the end.
He asked if anyone else in the community had the same issue and how they rationalized the purchase.
The Answers
A Jaguar E-Type.
One of the most popular and common answers was that the author should just rent the fancy cars he wants to drive. This accomplishes several of his goals while also avoiding many of the issues he’s concerned with.
First, he doesn’t have to worry about buying the wrong one and being stuck with it. If he doesn’t like it, then he can return it after a couple of days. If he loves it, then he can just rent it again when he has the time to go for a drive and not feel pressured to drive it every day to justify his purchase. Buying a car just to brag that you have a fancy car isn’t a good enough reason to do so.
Second, he might end up saving money by only renting a couple days a month instead of making expensive car payments and spending money on something that will only sit in his garage most of the time.
Another common response was that if someone this rich needs to go to Reddit to get advice on how to spend his money, then he probably doesn’t really want a fancy car that bad anyway. If he really wanted to drive a fancy car, someone like him would be able to go out and buy it on a whim, so there might be other reasons keeping him from making the purchase.
This is exactly what a large group of commenters said, in fact. That the best way to find out if he really wants the car is to stop spending time on Reddit and just go out and buy it. If he doesn’t like it, he can always sell it again, as there are plenty of people who will be happy to take it.
Someone with such an obscene level of wealth shouldn’t be worrying about missing out on time with their kids as they have enough money to never work another day in their life and buy multiple fancy cars. Also, any additional expense that comes with the car (parking space, repairs, registration, etc.) are drops in the bucket of his finances, so it seems like he has a problem with prioritizing his time and money, and generally spends his life making money and doesn’t know what else to do with it now that he has it.
Many of the commenters said that they had bought their own fancy cars earlier than they did, citing the fun drives, making friends, and community meetups that they enjoyed.
Throughout all the comments and replies, however, there was one underlying agreement: this person has many times more money than he needs to be worrying about such a relatively small purchase, and he has let the hustle culture and financial maximizing mentality of online communities go to his head. He forgot the whole reason of why he makes money in the first place: to provide for his family and enjoy life. If he’s not enjoying life and not involved in the lives of his family, then why work?
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