Thursday, August 28, 2008

Does Your Car Hold Value?

Does your car hold more than gas and synthetic oil? Does it retain value over the years? We all know that cars are a luxury and not an investment as they lose value with purchase--at least in most parts of the world. If you buy a car, do you ever consider how long you want to keep it?Until hub caps fall off or get swiped? When it reaches a magic mileage number? When the automatic sunroof becomes a manual operation? I wonder if car buyers ever calculate the average cost of maintenance over the years (based on how long they plan to keep it) and the estimated value when they're ready to sell it vs. what they paid for the car.

In the Grecco household, we normally keep a car until the engine is huffing and puffing beyond the chitty-chitty bang-bang stage (a classic children's movie). Thankfully we know good mechanics in Minnesota for major repairs and my husband John has always tended to regular maintenance. Our family has a Toyota Camry--it's the perfect family size car--roomy, comfortable, plenty of trunk storage, good gas mileage, not ridiculously large like SUVs, and at the time was considered a "Value Holder". We were surprised not to see it listed in the
"10 Best and 10 Worst cars to hold their value". But I'm confident when the time comes, it will sell easily if we continue to take excellent care.

How does your car fare? Did you recently sell a car? Share your story here by POSTING A COMMENT! Go ahead!

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