Buy a used car. Rental car companies like Hertz are making this easy because they have a business of buying up new cars, then selling them off after a year or two for a discount. You can get a lightly used car that probably still has a couple of years of warranty life on it without having to destroy your savings
Be careful with ex-rental cars. These things have been abused to hell and back; think full throttle on a cold engine, the cheapest fuel available and a lot of unavoided potholes. On the other side, you know they have been maintained, but expect a lot more wear. You can buy one, but you should know why they are as cheap as they are.
The worst part about rentals is that they simply get used more than personal cars. They're always being driven by different drivers, in unfamiliar places, loading and unloading a full load of people and baggage. All the knobs and adjustments repeatedly adjusted. Every threshold scraped and scuffed by repeated shuffling of passengers and bags.
And while they have a policy of maintaining vehicles, nobody who touches the vehicle has any personal investment in it. Due for an oil change, and it's booked out? Out it goes!
I can't imagine how many tires people pop by running into stuff. When I rent with one of the big brands that lets you pick a car off the lot, I usually try to find the car with the best set of tires. It's amazing how many rental vehicles with ~10k miles on them already have 3 or 4 different brands of tire on them. Usually they're the cheapest of cheap brands too.
I went from maybe someday I will buy a car to being fuck it, no reason to buy something so expensive that I clearly don’t really need. This article made cars look even more like a luxury good than they already are.
That's quite flippant. They are a big investment, no question, but they open up a lot of possibilities since you can essentially go anywhere at any time with a large capacity in case you need to take things with you. They can help you to physically reach employers who could pay enough to make the vehicle a small cost, depending on the situation
I can always rent a car if I need one. My commute to work is an important consideration of what employers I’m willing to consider and it is unlikely I would ever work for someone that doesn’t pay me enough to live near my job or in a city that has robust public transit.
