There's pressure to over-spend on everything. HN will justify it for some classes of products and complain about it for others.
The one guy who moves heaven and earth to live in a "good neighborhood" that's normally a tad much for his income would get accolades around here. The guy who lives in a trailer park but and expends the same effort to drive a nice car gets derided. I don't see the big difference between them. They're both just going "all in" in different aspects of their lives.
>One goes up in value, often greatly, the other is nearly worthless.
The Toyota fanboys would take issue with that statement ;)
Personally owning and maintaining my own metal box on wheels saves me ~2hr per day over the publicly owned metal box on wheels. Even in Europe that would be worth it for just about any white collar professional.
Not everything has to be a good investment.
I drive junk but I understand why some people would rather sit in a really, really nice car for their commute. The way I see it transportation is just the cost of having a job. "Base" transportation has zero residual value. You can't sell a worn out shitbox for anything. You also can't sell a city bus or rail car at all. If you throw more money on top of the "base" A to B car in order to have something nice then you might get some value back but it's fundamentally a luxury expense. For my use case and for many people, the "base" car offers so much utility improvement over anything else that it's a) a no brainier b) basically pays for itself vs attaining equivalent standard of living without it.
They're usually tied together. Quite often it's the car that allows the person to buy a home and commute to and from work to this home. The car is very much a tool. It it frees up time (which can be traded for money), or otherwise opens up opportunities (like to live in a suburb and commute to work rather than taking public transportation which may be nonexistent or otherwise time inefficient) then it's an investment as well - it just returns its value not in money or intrinsic value of the car but in saved time, effort, and doors opened.
Not everything should be viewed as a financial instrument only.
Say a musician buys a trumpet, and 20 years later that trumpet has depreciated. The argument could be made that if he bought a house instead of a trumpet it would have been a much better investment. But how would he have played the trumpet his whole life then?
The one guy who moves heaven and earth to live in a "good neighborhood" that's normally a tad much for his income would get accolades around here. The guy who lives in a trailer park but and expends the same effort to drive a nice car gets derided. I don't see the big difference between them. They're both just going "all in" in different aspects of their lives.