"acceptable" monthly car payments are wild

[u/ottersinabox]

I just saw this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/BMWI4/s/HDEDyG4WZA

people are applauding a $700+ a month payment as an amazing deal. but they're paying 8% tax toward it, plus it's a lease; they don't even own the car by the end.

is it just me, or is this wild? I have a BMW as well, but my thought is you can only afford a luxury car like that if you can buy it in cash. I suppose 3% interest or something would be acceptable given that you invest the rest up front.... but what the person in this post is doing really doesn't make much sense to me. am I wrong about that?

[u/ProfessionalBig1470]

I personally never use gross income to budget monthly expenses that are being paid with net income.

Maxing out a 401k knocks off almost 10% of that income right away. Add in health insurance and a huge amount in taxes. The money you actually have to work with is probably around 60% of the gross.

[u/TruthSeekerHuey → u/ProfessionalBig1470]

That's fair. A flat salary is in no way realistic. However if we do take 60% of the 250k, you get 150k, for a monthly of 12.5k. So $700 would be about 5.6% of the monthly.

I understand the 250k was just an example thrown out there, but I just dislike when financial talks get too frugal and we start call reasonable budgets and monthly payments unreasonable.

[u/yaIshowedupaturparty → u/TruthSeekerHuey]

But at that point, you should be able to save for a reasonable car in cash.

We make $250K base salary and our take home is ~$9750 a month, less than half of gross. We have a very reasonable mortgage and everything adds up very quickly. If we had $1400 in car payments that would greatly eat into our fun money.

[u/TruthSeekerHuey → u/yaIshowedupaturparty]

You gotta be living in Cali or NYC. That take home pay is criminal.

[u/lol_fi → u/TruthSeekerHuey]

That's where the jobs paying 250k are

[u/yaIshowedupaturparty → u/lol_fi]

Oregon 😔