The Automotivist

Your car payment is $772. But Americans pay an average of $575 every month on top of that. In costs they never budgeted for. A thread on the hidden invoice. 🧵

I took a test drive in April once. Did not plan to buy. Walked in to just look. Left with 72 months of commitment I did not fully understand until the second payment. The test drive is not a neutral experience. It is engineered. The smell, the seat, the window quote -- none of that is information. It is atmosphere. The math I needed was the monthly ownership price, the insurance quote, the percentage of my income. None of that happened in the test drive. Average new car right now: $49,275. Average refund: $3,182. That is 6.5 cents on the dollar. The rest is atmosphere. Sources: Edmunds Q1 2026, IRS 2025.

@Carscoop The term got longer because the car did not get cheaper. We just normalized dragging the bill further into the future. Easier to sell more expensive cars to the masses.

Seven-Year Car Loans Were a Red Flag a Decade Ago, Now They’re The Norm #car #auto #cars #Echobox=1776623619" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">carscoops.com/2026/04/new-ca…

@lindsay__stamp True its all out of control now

@_automotivist Nah. My rent back then was $550. Idk if you can find $550 rent anywhere. Food is way more expensive too and so are utilities

My first job out of college in 2015 paid me $55,000 per year and I was ballin. Rent, car, bills, investments, and still easily had money left over for spending and fun. We used to be a proper country

@AccentInvesting Everyone nods at “don’t borrow a lifestyle you can’t afford.” The dealership just calls it a monthly car payment.

The easiest way to level up financially is to resist the temptation to borrow a lifestyle you cannot afford.

@legen_eth $1M gets you the keys to those cars. The depreciation, insurance, and service bills make sure you never actually own them.

You need $100m+ to have the things in the images. $1mil and you can barely afford the cars

@GuyDealership 84-month loans didn’t double because cars got more expensive. They doubled because the monthly number got easier to say yes to.

[NEWS] JD Power is warning of an auto loan reckoning: 84-month loans have nearly doubled their 2019 share, and 72-month loans now top 40% of all financed purchases. 26% of used trade-ins carried negative equity in 2025, up from 24% the year before. And buyers who financed in 2022 will owe $1,400 more after 48 months than 2021 buyers did at the same point. JD Power says incentives and longer terms are keeping the cycle alive, but warns it cannot be engineered forever. Read today's top automotive stories, presented by @PodiumHQ : carguymedia.com/4dPB1w1 (Source: JD Power Automotive OEM Intelligence Report)

@themoviedadsc Mortgage $1,570. Utilities $282. No car payment. That is why the rest compounds.

Our mortgage payment (including taxes/insurance) is $1,570. Our utilities (water/electric/gas) were only $282 *total* this month. No car payments. Can't reiterate enough how crucial keeping expenses low are for building a $1,000,000+ net worth.

@LoudOutside She celebrated the $1,000 monthly number for 90 months at 15%. The math she forgot was waiting in the finance office.

Lady is celebrating buying a new car: $4,000 down, $1,000 per month at 15% interest for 90 months

@Bitcoin_Teddy $80k car loan gets “nice ride.” $8 coffee gets the retirement lecture. That’s how the normalization works.

$80K car loan → “Nice ride, enjoy it.” $150K student debt → “Everyone has it, no big deal.” $25K vacation on credit → “You only live once.” $10K in Bitcoin → “You’re crazy, that’s gambling.” Society will cheer you on going broke, but will panic the second you try to build wealth.

@UziCryptoo The caller ran the math on the 401k match. Most people never run the same math on what the car loan is costing them every month instead.

CALLER: My employer matches 6% on my 401k. I max it. That’s $7,000 free every year. DAVE RAMSEY: Make sure you’re debt free first! CALLER: I’m passing up $7,000 to pay off a 4% car loan faster? DAVE RAMSEY: Debt-free feels amazing! CALLER: $7,000 a year feels pretty amazing too. Turning down a 100% return to feel good is not a financial strategy. Every dollar matters.

@saylordocs Everything on that list gets called dangerous except the car loan. That’s why it stays normalized.

Things more dangerous than $8 coffees: - $40,000 wedding ($5,000/hr party) - $80,000 degree that gets you a $50,000/yr job - $40,000 car loan because you "earned it" - $2,000/mo apartments to flex for friends ...Thats why 80% of people are broke.

@IllimitableMan_ Zero debt over 30 with hair, physique, house and cashflow is rare. The financed car is usually the missing piece.

Men over 30 with hair, high libido, elite physique, a car, a house, zero debt, and consistent cashflow are rare species now.

If your tax refund is sitting in a checking account and a car decision is ahead of you -- move it to a high-yield savings account before you walk into a dealership. Current top rate: 4.21% APY at Newtek Bank via Bankrate (April 2026). At $3,182, that is $11/month in interest while you make the decision without showroom pressure. You lose nothing by waiting 30 days. The dealership will still be there. The urgency is not yours -- it is April.

Everyone thinks the 84-month loan makes the car more affordable. Here is what the math actually says. On a $45,000 loan at 7%, stretching from 60 to 84 months drops your payment by $212 a month. It adds $3,587 in total interest. 22.9% of new car loans in Q1 2026 were 84 months or longer -- a record, per Edmunds. The lower payment is the product. The $3,587 is the price of it. Source: Edmunds Q1 2026.

@JohnToThePoint More is lost to indecision than wrong decision.

You can recover from a bad investment. It’s harder to recover from years of not investing at all. Time forgives mistakes. It doesn’t forgive delay.

If you are buying in April: 5 used vehicles under $28K where the 5-year ownership math works at median income. All-in monthly cost -- loan plus insurance plus gas plus maintenance. No estimates. Just numbers. 5yr at 7.5%, 900 mi/mo, $4.09/gal, median gross $83,730.

@DadisFIRE The wealth hack is not just buying cheaper cars. It's breaking the reflex that says more money means you now need a more expensive one.

🚗 My Car Buying Strategy = Wealth Hack 💰 I never bought a car with under 100k miles or sold one with less than 200k miles—until I became a liquid millionaire. 💵 When that happened 8 years ago, I went BIG… 🎩 Bought a sweet, big baller 2006 Mazda 3 hatchback. Brand new. 🚙 A few years later, I added a Honda Odyssey… with 90k miles on it. 🛠️ I still have both. 🚫 I’ve never had a car loan. Not once. 💵 I refuse to buy a car I can’t pay cash for. ⛽ Even when I was 16 years old making $5 an hour at a gas station in the mid-90s. 💰 Could I afford almost any car? Yes. 🚦Do I even want a new one? Not yet. 🔑 The biggest wealth hack? Mastering the ability to NOT always need more. 🔥 That’s how you build real wealth. Don't need more. 🚀

You have your tax refund in the account right now. What car are you actually looking at -- make, model, trim? I will run the real ownership math on it.

@torquenewsauto Some poeple are always going to be fundamentally opposed to EVs no matter what, simply because they're different than what was before/familiar. I think there's a place for both.

Something big is quietly happening around the BMW M3 right now, and I don’t think enthusiasts are fully processing it yet. On one side, the current gas-powered BMW M3 is still an absolute powerhouse: up to 523 horsepower in Competition xDrive form, razor-sharp handling, and one of the last true driver-focused sport sedans left. But at the same time, BMW is clearly signaling a major shift: an all-electric M3 is coming, likely with four motors and potentially 800+ horsepower, which would make it the most powerful M3 ever built. Look torquenews.com/1/something-bi… So here’s what I’m genuinely curious about: if BMW nails the performance with an electric M3, does that matter to you as much as the sound, the feel, and the character of the current car? Or do you think the M3 name fundamentally depends on internal combustion to mean what it has always meant?