<p>to be able to purchase a 50k car and still live comfortably?</p>
<p>At least 100k?</p>
<p>I’m asking cause I hope to one day buy a Mercedes E-Class in my 20s…</p>
<p>Do you mean purchase the car with cash or take out a loan for the car? Many people also lease cars.</p>
<p>As far as salary, it really depends on other expenses - mortgage, rent, loan payments, insurance, etc, but generally a car payment should be no more than 8% of gross pay, assuming other debt is not too high. So, assuming about a 60 month loan, payments would be a bit more than $1,000 monthly - gross income would need to be around $150K per year.</p>
<p>The other thing you can do is save your money for several years. I’ve known people with modest incomes who drove fairly high-end cars, because that’s what they chose to save for and spend their money on.</p>
<p>Those high-end cars can last nicely for many many years.</p>
<p>I would say that you’d need a good 6-figure salary, unless the rest of your life is going to be rather frugal.</p>
<p>I can’t imagine buying an expensive car (and pay its insurance/maintenance) while also living in a so-so home, etc. Typically, when someone wants a nice car, they want the other status trappings, too…nice home, nice clothes, kids dressed well, etc.</p>
<p>Buy it pre-owned! The minute you take it off the lot the car loses 50% of it’s value! Not a smart way to buy.</p>
<p>
If OP is willing to settle for a “gently used” high end car, it’s not uncommon in this market for the car to be leased for 3 years and turned in, and what you’re saying does apply.
If OP wants a high end car and further desires to have a late-model high end car, the point is moot.</p>
<p>Nobody can answer that question without knowing your complete cost of living, and your priorities. A payment on 50K over 6 years will probably be somewhere around $900/month (if you can get a good interest rate). If you make 100K, depending on your tax rate and other deductions, you’ll probably take home around $6K/month.</p>
<p>Edit: I see somebody already wrote the same basic thing up above. You could afford it on 100K if you didn’t have a family and other major expences.</p>
<p>I would never buy a car like that myself, but I understand that Mercedes does cover a lot of your maintenance for you, unless I’m mistake. Because most expensive cars are expensive to service too.</p>
<p>A guy at work and I used to have a friendly argument about the supposed high quality of the Mercedes. I drive mid-range Japanese cars, and they last for decades with only modest repair costs along the way. He drove a Mercedes he said because he was looking for higher “quality” than that. I pointed out that he was paying those big bucks for false quality, because his car was constantly in the shop running up huge service and repair bills. He never conceded the point, but eventually he tired of the repair costs and sold the Mercedes and bought a Lexus.</p>
<p>^^Has his Lexus been recalled?</p>
<p>My daughter had big plans for money she maybe earning soon, until I rudely pointed it out to her that she would have to pay for her rent, food, utilities, clothing… It was a surprise to her that her earnings will no longer be her extra spending money.</p>
<p>bovertine is right, post 8.
It is like asking who is the best NFL player. Too many variables to be a realistic adult question.
And quality? A month ago Consumer Reports or a similar mag might have said Toyota #1. Look at them now. Honda? Not doing well right now either. Yet, both earned a great reutation in the 80’s. </p>
<p>I have a '73 Dodge(not my main car) just turned 300k, still starts and runs fine.</p>
<p>The ability to delay gratification is one of the keys to building wealth.</p>
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<p>I doubt CR has dropped their ratings of Toyotas and Hondas just because of these recalls. They are still great cars. And very reliable.</p>
<p>My H is a huge fan of old Mercedes. His current car is a 1979 Mercedes. His view is that Mercedes became a marketing company after 1998 and any Mercedes built after '98 is not of the same quality as those built earlier. That being said–H bought a his first new Mercedes (S500) when he turned 60. He hasn’t had problems, but he’s religious about maintenance of his cars. If you can find mechanics specializing in foreign cars, you’ll do better on repair/maintenance work than you will if you go to a Mercedes dealer. Anyone who likes vintage Mercedes could recommend a mechanic.</p>
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Cars never played a big part in our life, and every Caravan, Accord, or Toyota we’ve owned had 100-250K miles when we retired them. The wealth we had built up did quite a number in the home/stock market in the last three years. So my advice would be to strive for balance. Do not to focus completely on building wealth at the cost of giving up everything in your productive years. With kids now 16/18/20, we wish we were less tight-fisted with discretionary spending on ourselves (eg. more frequent and more up-market vacations) when they were still all at home, than put practically all our spare change into college funds and retirement.</p>
<p>My daughter had big plans for money she maybe earning soon, until I rudely pointed it out to her that she would have to pay for her rent, food, utilities, clothing… It was a surprise to her that her earnings will no longer be her extra spending money.</p>
<p>LOL…So many kids think the salaries of their first “real jobs” sound so BIG, until they realize a major chunk will go towards…rent, food, car, utilities, clothes, perhaps some student loans, etc, etc (and hopefully some savings!)</p>
<p>I drove German cars for 19 years but the availability of good mechanics was a huge problem and I eventually went with Toyota and the difference was like night and day on maintenance. That said, it isn’t all that unusual for a company that’s wildly successful to become complacent and that has happened at Toyota though they started working to turn that around a few years ago.</p>
<p>And Tax. With 100k salary, at least 1/3 will be taken out by federal, state, sales, property, etc… And what about college savings for the children.</p>
<p>Straight out of college you’ll be lucky these days to start at $50K or so. That’s about what the median is if you have an engineering or Ivy League college degree. And to give you some idea of what a grown-up middle class lifestyle costs, the old rule of thumb used to be to buy a house costing no more than 2.5X your annual income. In many parts of the country, a perfectly ordinary 3 or 4 bedroom house averages $400K and up. Many middle class people have been ignoring those old rules of thumb. Hence the nation’s current predicament.</p>