That's only if you intend to sell it for more than scrap value some day.
Any car I buy is getting sold to the junkyard for $500 in 10+ years and 200k+ mi. How steeply it's paper value declines between now and then doesn't matter much to me.
True. And in all reality, this is great for consumers and bad for holders of inventory.
There's a tendency among people in business to mark everything to market. This helps avoid otherwise hidden losses but it doesn't actually make sense in some situations. For example, in the case of a family that owns two cars and replaces one every five years.
Ha! Good luck with that. Scrapped cars are down to like $60/ton.
It seems reasonable that the scrap steel and used car markets would be correlated... If self-driving cars cause a drop in car ownership, it will be a good time to figure out a previously-uneconomical use of steel.
Any car I buy is getting sold to the junkyard for $500 in 10+ years and 200k+ mi. How steeply it's paper value declines between now and then doesn't matter much to me.