Cars are expensive. They are probably the largest depreciating asset people spend money on in their lives. If you spend $500 on car payments every month from the time you are 20 till when you are 70, you spend a total of $300,000 on car payments alone (not to include, gas, insurance, repairs). That is a lot of years worth of work (unless youre making $300,000 a yr).
As of 2006, the average life of a car is between 6.8 yrs and 9.2 yrs. If you take care of your car, you can surpass this lifespan quite easily I think. I am 30 and only just got the second car of my life 9 months ago. And only did that because my first got stolen and totaled.
Any amount of time you drive a car past the time when it is paid off you will be driving it for free (without a car payment). So to the extent you are trying to live modestly, you ought to try and drive your car as long as possible. The more yrs you can drive your car without having to make payments, the lower that $300,000 number I quoted above will be. And money that isnt being spent on a depreciating car, is money that can be spent on more important stuff (retirement savings, kids college, mortgage payments, etc).
