Deciding on a yaris- purchasing choices and haggling woes

[JustPassinThru]

Originally Posted by nookandcrannycar

Good point. IMO, this matters if you AREN'T buying to drive the car until it depreciates to zero or almost zero, as I do.

Well...people change. Their lives change and their needs change. Oh, man, I've seen this SO MANY times in my life...

Back twenty years ago, I had a career change that was a lifestyle change. I went to work on the railroad.

My car at that point was an old minivan...very cheap and practical. BUT...I had to use MY CAR to traverse railroad yards. MacPherson Strut suspensions weren't designed for that.

I TRASHED that old minivan. And when it got so beat I couldn't ignore it, I bought a Jeep Wrangler. Just the ticket for driving on railroad-yard ballast.

Except...shortly after I bought it, I got promoted. I became a locomotive engineer. Which meant, I wasn't driving across railroad yards anymore - I was driving FROM CITY TO CITY since I was low in seniority and was being displaced, one town to another. Had to accept it or quit.

The Jeep wasn't up to long-distance commutes. It got sold.

And so it goes. When I bought my 2012 Yaris, I was commuting 40 miles to work. Good car for that. Now I'm commuting FOUR miles; and meantime I have a LOT of personal crap to haul as I set up in a new town. I need, now, a truck, not a car.

What I'm getting at is: You may WANT to keep that car forever; but if you wind up with a family and kidlets; or you wind up unable to drive at all, for money or legal problems; or you wind up with a company-provided car or truck...you'll be wanting to sell.

You may not see it coming until it does, but very few people have lives so stable they can keep one type of car from when they buy it new or near-new to where it's scrap.

Good luck.