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. 🧵

@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?

The refund is leverage if you use it deliberately. It is a trigger if April uses it for you. I walk through the full decision -- buy now, hold, or already underwater -- in Friday's issue. The math is the same no matter what month it is. The pressure is not.

Right now 30.5% of all trade-ins carry negative equity. The average gap is $7,214. Most of those buyers did not plan to go underwater. They made an April decision. The refund felt like permission. Eighteen months later, it felt like nothing. Source: Edmunds Q1 2026.

The IRS issued the average 2025 tax refund at $3,182. About half of refund recipients have a car on their list. April is the highest-traffic month at dealerships. That is not a coincidence. The refund is not a down payment. It is a trigger.

@skumWgmi Taught to work hard and climb the ladder of life while the people before us were pulling the ladder up behind them.

Millennials are the most educated generation in American history. They are less wealthy then their parents were at the same age. They work more hours. They own less. At some point "work ethic" stops being the variable.

@theficouple No car payment will not build the whole list for you. It just makes the other three easier to reach.

I wish more people knew that having: - No car payments - 6 month emergency fund - 2-3 income streams - $100,000 invested Is a cheat code for a peaceful life.

@realUNICARNS Throw some decent wheels on it and murder it out. I kind of dig it.

Would you? 1981 Chevrolet Corvette Supercharged for sale via eBay Ad: ebay.com/itm/2676400976…

@randrewcworth Nothing more comfortable for all occasions 👌

My wife is trying to clothes shop for me but she forgets “this” is where it stopped for me. Never left this era.