Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, the show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

Today, we tackle the subject of new cars. A question came in on the

Twitter a few weeks ago about leasing a car and I sat down a couple of times and

recorded a show on car leasing but there always ended up being two a the major problem is that you have to lease a new car.

So I realize that first we need to talk about new cars

as compared to older used cars, and then separately we can talk about leasing versus some other

form of new car financing so today we talk about buying a new car. Now new cars are one of those things that get a bad rap in the personal finance space for good reason because frankly they can be very expensive and very deleterious to your personal wealth.

However, I want to explain to you why.

See, I don't approach most topics in finance with a dogmatic approach.

It's not that I mind dogma. I just want dogma to be applied in the place where dogma is important and not to be

mixed up in places where dogma is not. And I want to explain to you why new cars for

most of us are usually not the best idea.

But you can listen to these reasons and then judge for yourself.

So if you were going to buy a car, what would be some of the benefits that you could get from choosing to buy a brand spankin new car?

Well, of course it would smell great. It would be very clean and very beautiful.

You could peel a lot of little plastic off of the things yourself. You could make sure that nobody else's

muddy boots had soiled your carpet.

Those things are simple and obvious.

But what are some of those other benefits that don't wear off in a few weeks after the new car smell has effectively

disappeared. In my mind one of the biggest benefits of your choosing to buy a

new car is you can get exactly what you want. As someone who's purchased a variety of

used vehicles I have learned that you can usually get most of what you want, but it's very rare for you to get exactly what you want.

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