My DK1 passed her driving test on Monday. She can't officially get her license until she turns 16 in January but still it's a big deal and accomplishment. It is a bit unreal that time has gone by so quickly. A year ago she started freshman year and she'll be a sophomore. She will be driving to school in January. Our insurance is going to go through the roof.
Another consideration is I wanted to wait until the end of 2025 and potentially buy another tesla. But the $7500 EV credit is going away end of September. We will only qualify for it for 2024 and never again. We bought a 2021 tesla Y last year but used for $30k. And it's worked out great. But now I really want AI5 for the newest generation of tesla and we were hoping to make use of the tax credit. This would be an awesome year since we'll be in the 37% bracket. That means it's worth like 3x that value to us. But I am not sure i want to buy HW 4 when AI5 is around the corner.
We're paying cash for the car but I looked into leasing to wait it out. But the money factor or interest rate is 8%. Crazy. If they let me prepay it and 0% lease then fine. But they won't. So I guess leasing is out of the question right now. IF interest rates come down I can see us leasing so that we can have the cutting edge technoloy in self driving. Something we personally find super valuable. Maybe others don't but we need it.
Anyway I guess another thing to consider is if we buy a 4th car now we will pay an extra $1k in insurance for 6 months. I'm not sure how to balance losing the tax credit or buying the car now? I wish we could have till end of the year.
Thoughts on what we should do?
August 8th, 2025 at 03:53 pm 1754664815
August 8th, 2025 at 04:13 pm 1754666015
August 8th, 2025 at 09:43 pm 1754685822
Good job getting the $7500 credit before it expires.
August 10th, 2025 at 01:47 am 1754786862