I think socalarm has a very interesting point here (the car vs house comparison). It is true that cars have lots of wear and tear. However, people don’t just buy them for transportation. If that were that case, people would buy a car, take good care of it, and keep it for over 150,000 miles or over 12 years. Most people change cars more often than that though. And that’s really dumb, from a financial perspective. We change cars more often than necessary, which means we are buying expensive, depreciating assets more often than what usual wear and tear would justify.
