Laura Alix
“So my credit union will give me a loan on the car I want at an interest rate of 2.74 percent for up to 72 months,” my roommate said to me Friday morning. “Is that a good rate?”
After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I assured her that yes, that was a very good interest rate for a used car, indeed.
There’s probably never been a better time to buy a car, but I’m still glad I sold mine. It was the best financial decision I could have made this year, and I have no plans to so much as consider another car for at least the next 12 months – hell, maybe for as long as I live in Boston.
Yet my bank keeps spamming my inbox with offers for a car loan. “Get a bank auto rate as low as 0.74 percent!” and “We’re driving down rates!” and “Hurry! Now’s the time to lock in your rate!”
Enviable rates, sure, but I’m not taking the bait – and I’m apparently not the only one, either. A new report suggests that ride-sharing apps (think Uber, Lyft) and car-sharing services (like ZipCar) could slow U.S. car sales in the future. That obviously has implications for those who would finance said car purchases, although nobody’s suggesting that individual car ownership is going to vanish altogether.
While I do actually love my bank, I’m in no hurry to put another asset on their books when I’m still paying off my own liability. Call me a cynical millennial, but between the availability of good public transit, cabs, ride-sharing apps and ZipCar, owning a car just doesn’t make any financial sense for me.
Trust me: I had a lot of time to weigh these options against the cost of maintenance and insurance while I shoveled my rapidly depreciating asset out from beneath a mountain of snow this past winter.
Guilt me if you must for not participating more fully in the economy, but I would argue that this lifestyle shift is borne less out of any sort of Occupy Wall Street-style ethos and more out of the sense of practical cautiousness (yes, really) that characterizes my generation.
And fear not, auto lenders. You will always have people like my roommate, who would love to eschew car ownership altogether but can’t because she commutes into the suburbs for work. After all is said and done, she wound up getting an even lower rate on her car loan than the one she originally quoted me. Who said those student loans were good for nothing?
