I’ve recently really looked into buying an F-150. I’ve always loved trucks and tried a new one and loved it. Only issue is that my credit is not high enough to lease it, so I have to buy one if I want one.
What I’m wondering is if I should buy a used 2016 F-150 which would be around $30,000, which I can directly afford. Or a new F-150, which would run me around $43,000 for which I’d have to take out at least $13,000 in loans (which I’m not even sure I could do).
Thats an easy answer! get the 2016. The $13,000 difference between the two is the depreciation.
The used truck makes better financial sense.
Do a little more shopping. I realize every year there are price increases but I think you can find a new 2018 for less. If you hold off until September/October you may find some deeper discounts on unsold 2018s.
Granted I bought my truck in 2013. New F150, 4X4, Coyote V8, $25,900 out the door.
ah, life. my credit is not good? due to what? not paying bills? late payments? low income? and i dont know whether to buy a 43k truck or a 30k truck? why not a 15k truck? and use the extra money to pay other bills?
Your first priority is to get your credit score where it should be. Poor credit means higher interest rates and higher insurance sometimes. Also leasing is not a good move either . Buying a truck now will knock your score down even more.
Incentives are often very generous on trucks, and they also tend to have a lot more margin built into their sticker prices than cars do, so I wouldn’t be totally off the idea of buying new. When I sold cars for a living knocking $10k-$15k off of the sticker price of a F-150/250/350 wasn’t unusual at all. With that said a used truck may still be the better value for money if you can get a good deal. With only a handful of exceptions, leasing is the most expensive way of driving a new car
I know this is unsolicited advice, but if your credit is such that you can’t get approval for a $13k loan, you need to use the money that you would spend on this truck, and pay back whatever debts you have. You might want to see about taking out a series of small personal loans and then pay them back on time this combined with paying off any outstanding debt will raise your credit score fairly quickly. But if you have credit card debit, then that should be the priority.