The cheapest new car (by MSRP, not actual dealer pricing) in America right now is the Nissan Versa… manual.
A manual transmission.
In 2025.
It costs $18.3k.
Before tax and dealer markup.
For this car to be 30% of your yearly income, you would need to make $61k a year.
That’s an hourly wage of $29.33 an hour, after taxes, with a full time, 40 hr/week job, taking zero time off.
Before only federal income taxes, you’d have to make about 72k yearly, a full time 40 hr wage of about $34.61.
If you say the median zoomer is 28 years old…
Then only a quarter of zoomers in America make that much money, or more.
… and the ones that make that much are very likely to have student loan debt at least on par with the monthly payments for that car, if not more.
Oh, and that quarter of zoomers isn’t really a quarter of zoomers, its a quarter of zoomers with jobs, in the workforce.
If you’re unemployed for roughly over 6 months, or disabled or seriously injured or whatever, you aren’t counted as as unemployed, you just fall out of the denominator of the ‘people with jobs / workforce’ equations that are unemployment numbers.
By your 30% metric, the median 28 year old in America who works makes about 47k yearly before taxes, so about $41.5k after just federal income tax, and can thus afford a car with a sticker price of…!
$12.5k.
On Edmunds, I’m getting about 500 cars (all used, none are even ‘certified pre owned’) within 200 miles of me that aren’t obvious repair nightmares, get 30 MPG, and have less than 100k miles on em, which are $12.5k or under.
There are 10 million people in that same radius of which roughly 15% are 28 years old +/- 5 years…
…so…
Thats about 500, roughly affordable to the average person, cars for about 1.5 million people.
I guess substantively responding to what I said would be too difficult, because that would involve admitting you are incorrect, so you’ve instead devised an insult in the form of infantilizing, mocking, useless, parental-style advice… doxxing your own location in the process.
Masterful play Mr. Boomer, bravo.
You’re practically the platonic ideal of a boomer.
Well, didn’t realize you needed me to point out that after some arbitrary math, your main theme was out of 10,000,000 people there were, essentially, 500 cars to choose from… So, here’s another example for you, and let me know if you need more explanation (this area is in the Midwest… Around 11,000,000 people of the 200 mile radius):
Found the boomer.
The cheapest new car (by MSRP, not actual dealer pricing) in America right now is the Nissan Versa… manual.
A manual transmission.
In 2025.
It costs $18.3k.
Before tax and dealer markup.
For this car to be 30% of your yearly income, you would need to make $61k a year.
That’s an hourly wage of $29.33 an hour, after taxes, with a full time, 40 hr/week job, taking zero time off.
Before only federal income taxes, you’d have to make about 72k yearly, a full time 40 hr wage of about $34.61.
If you say the median zoomer is 28 years old…
Then only a quarter of zoomers in America make that much money, or more.
… and the ones that make that much are very likely to have student loan debt at least on par with the monthly payments for that car, if not more.
Oh, and that quarter of zoomers isn’t really a quarter of zoomers, its a quarter of zoomers with jobs, in the workforce.
If you’re unemployed for roughly over 6 months, or disabled or seriously injured or whatever, you aren’t counted as as unemployed, you just fall out of the denominator of the ‘people with jobs / workforce’ equations that are unemployment numbers.
By your 30% metric, the median 28 year old in America who works makes about 47k yearly before taxes, so about $41.5k after just federal income tax, and can thus afford a car with a sticker price of…!
$12.5k.
On Edmunds, I’m getting about 500 cars (all used, none are even ‘certified pre owned’) within 200 miles of me that aren’t obvious repair nightmares, get 30 MPG, and have less than 100k miles on em, which are $12.5k or under.
There are 10 million people in that same radius of which roughly 15% are 28 years old +/- 5 years…
…so…
Thats about 500, roughly affordable to the average person, cars for about 1.5 million people.
Here’s another resource you can use if you’re looking for an affordable car under $12,500. I’m sure we could find more 😉
I guess substantively responding to what I said would be too difficult, because that would involve admitting you are incorrect, so you’ve instead devised an insult in the form of infantilizing, mocking, useless, parental-style advice… doxxing your own location in the process.
Masterful play Mr. Boomer, bravo.
You’re practically the platonic ideal of a boomer.
Well, didn’t realize you needed me to point out that after some arbitrary math, your main theme was out of 10,000,000 people there were, essentially, 500 cars to choose from… So, here’s another example for you, and let me know if you need more explanation (this area is in the Midwest… Around 11,000,000 people of the 200 mile radius):