Many of my readers are well aware of my problems with cars. People spend far too much on their iron and plastic masters, so much that they need to borrow or lease to acquire them. Even worse, when the car is eventually paid off (the average new car loan is almost six years), our hapless owner is eager to trade it in on yet another new and amply financed model.

I’ll never forget one remark by a young woman who took umbrage with my speech remarks exhorting the audience to strive to eventually be able to pay cash for their cars. She said that she had carefully budgeted for her car payments and if she kept the car after it was paid off, her budget would be off kilter. In her words, and I’m not making this up: “What would I do with the extra money.” Not wishing to offend the sponsors of my talk, I resisted the strong temptation to say: “Why don’t you save it, you dodo?”

While I’m quite confident that you, dear reader, are not encumbering yourself with a lifetime of car loan or lease payments, you may have a family member, particularly a younger one, who is not so prudent. If so, here is an interesting bit of history. The standard rule of thumb in post-World War II America was to spend no more than two months’ income on a car and finance it over no more than 18 months. At the risk of eliciting some ire, I see little reason why we should vary from those parameters today although recent statistics say that 74% of the cars on the road today are not owned by the driver and 85% of new car purchases involve either loans or leases.