> Actually, you’d break even much sooner because your camper van is an asset. If you bought a used camper van from the 1980s, it’s unlikely to lose much more value under your watch. If you fix it up, it may even have appreciated in value when you look to sell it. If you resell it for anywhere near what you paid for it, you break even in just a couple of months. If you found a great deal on a van, you’d break even sooner. If you drove it around a lot and had high fuel costs, you might not.
Random, slightly OT thought: I never thought about buying used vehicles from this perspective. I've always thought of an auto as purely a liability.
Used cars depreciate very slowly on average (if something expensive breaks you are SOL though).
New cars lose a lot of value the moment you buy them, and then start to follow the used-car curve.
Everyday cars with a reputation for reliability lose their value very slowly. Luxury cars lose their value very quickly at first, but then slow down a lot.
Buying and selling to/from private parties saves a lot of money, but adds a lot of hassle.
Campers (and I'd imagine RVs) are much the same. Once they hit 15-20 years old, as long as long as the interior is decent and you keep them waterproof, they won't really lose value. Replacing components like the fridge or water heater is pretty cheap and simple if you can come by the parts.
When talking with a lamborghini dealer, I was informed that some exceptionally rich people will purchase one of those, keep it for 3 years, and then sell it back at a profit because they depreciate so slowly. I thought this was interesting.
There are virtually no lamborghinis that have ever increased in value over their original purchase price.
This might work if you live in a country with exceptionally high inflation - although you're still losing money (in real terms) the re-sale price might be nominally higher.
Exotic car speculation is the sport of kings - from time to time, it pays off (an orignal McLaren F1 is worth approximately double what they cost new, allowing for inflation). But plenty of 'special models' and such fail to reach icon status, and lose value rapidly.
Supercars have the steepest depreciation curves around. You would honestly do better with a portfolio of 100 sound campers than one supercar.
The idea was this. You buy a new [expensive car] and have it on loan. You pay off the loan steadily. Then, a few years down the road, you'll make it so that your loan is less than the amount of money you could sell the car for; then you sell the car. The difference is the amount of money you've made.
I did the math and you wouldn't be getting all of your money back; but at the end you made a profit and you did get to drive a rather expensive car.
In order for your plan to work, you'd need said car to increase in value more than the combined amount of:
- taxes paid
- storage costs
- service costs
- insurance costs
- interest costs on the loan
The car would have to do what 99.9999% of all cars on the planet fail to do - increase in value once it was purchased.
Now, if you live in a high inflation country, then the car may nominally increase in value more than the loan - but you're still losing money. You wouldn't be able to, say, swap the used car for a new one, so it's not really worth more.
>I did the math and you wouldn't be getting all of your money back; but at the end you made a profit and you did get to drive a rather expensive car.
If you didn't get your money back, by definition you didn't make a profit. You made a loss. A profit would be where you got all of your original capital back, and then some extra after all the expenses paid.
It just doesn't happen. Especially with brand new supercars.
Exceptionally rich people who buy Lamborghini and other exotic cars usually have several or even dozens of them. For the most part, they just sit in the garage.
Exotics have large oil pans. Your typical Murcielago requires 11 liters of oil to change, and that's synthetic, not dinosaur oil. Add to that an oil filter that is shipped from Italy. You're also changing the transmission oil, which also must be synthetic. There may be some other maintenance that the dealer likes to perform (brake fluid? spark plugs?) at the same time as an oil change. Add dealer markup and insurance to all of this and you're easily over $500.
Random, slightly OT thought: I never thought about buying used vehicles from this perspective. I've always thought of an auto as purely a liability.