Calling the Bottom...

in COE prices.

Charts from here.


I've talked about COE before a few times, like in 2018 and way back in 2015.

Honestly? If you're one of those kind of "guys" that get a hard-on for cars (they actually look at the cars at the car show, not the car girls), now is a pretty decent time to pick up a car, with COEs this low.

Personally, I don't really get it.

I don't like the luxury and status of owning a car. Why attract gold diggers? There are girls who literally exclude dating guys who don't own cars. That sounds fantastic. It'll be great to never meet such people.

I don't like playing the status game AFTER that of comparing cars either. For me, cars is just a mode of transportation. An expensive mode of transportation. That I have to pilot myself. And maintain. Bleah.

I actually don't even like driving cars. I rather sit down, play my phone or take a nap, and just be chauffeured around. Does driving spark joy in me? No, it does not.

Funny enough, I had a friend a few years ago who was "forced" to buy a car "because of job". Obviously, it's a self-justified reason to own a car. Mid 20s driving a car is quite cool, right? Like I said, it's a good gold digger magnet. Current status? Sold the car, swore he will never own a car again. Why? Just too expensive. After deducting all the expenses for his car from his take home pay, he had almost nothing left. It only took him about a year to realize how ridiculously expensive cars were and he dumped the car after that.

Granted, now it is "cheaper" to own a car, considering the initial capital outlay and the "depreciation" expense over the 10 years of the car. But you know what doesn't change? Everything else, like insurance, maintenance, road tax, parking, ERP, etc etc.

I know A LOT of people like to self justify that they literally NEED a car if they have kids and what not, but I don't have kids so I can't say. But I know of people with children and no car and they manage fine, so maybe it's possible that a car is a WANT and not a NEED?

Who knows. It will forever be one of life's great mysteries.

Seriously though, if you really want to buy a car, now is a decent time to consider it.

Then again, with all the improvements to transport infrastructure (new MRT lines, ride-sharing, e-scooters, on-demand buses, EV renting, sheltered walkways, etc etc), you really should also consider the financial cost of car ownership and the added value that it brings to your life, and if that cost is worth it.

For me, at this point of time in my life, it is definitely not.

Perhaps in the future when my personal situation has changed and my financial position has improved, but that's a different problem for a different day.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The HERD is coming into Crypto!!!

Image
Bought crypto in 2017? Congrats fellow crypto OG on being a verified early adopter. THARMS UP MAN. Buying crypto in 2018? HERD SHEEP FOMO NOOB, get rekt beech! Proof of herd? This . The herd is coming in and buying everything with a face value of under $10, especially things below $1. Madness. Who cares about circulating supply or market cap? Price is the most important thing, right? The next time someone says that the "price is cheap, so it's a better buy", I'm going to shit myself instantly on the spot. I cannot tell you the number of times people told me that they can't buy a crypto because "it's so expensive". *COUGH COUGH COUGH DGD COUGH COUGH COUGH* Anyway, we already knew that this would happen. Just a PSA and FYI, the herd is already here, and half of them are STILL stuck at registration and verification at exchanges. I know someone that has already been waiting 2.5 weeks to be verified. And that was before the alt-coin FOMO boomz and we are...
Read more

46% of 2017 ICOs have already failed, Yours is next

Interesting piece for your reading consumption. I'd say the #1 misconception now by intermediate crypto players is the thinking that you "need to do more ICOs to juice up your returns, especially in a sideways / bear market". Meh. Won't say I fully disagree, but I don't think that is very accurate, or else I would be doing that strategy as well. However, I must say that crypto ICOs are extremely skewed with risk and rewards. For some people, going for obscure ICOs and hunting down low cap cryptos - AFTER FILTERING AND ANALYSIS - can prove to be an extremely profitable strategy. Then again, this strategy only works with limited value since you don't want to end up being the only person driving up the price and volume. How can you exit a huge position if the daily trading volume is less than your holdings? ^ This is something that A LOT of people just don't understand. Market freaking depth. Just because the price is $X, that does not mean that you can sell...
Read more

Value Investing Case Study: Does it apply to Crypto?

Image
For some reason, I managed to stumble upon this article by Dr Wealth that was written back in Feb 2018 regarding his LTC trade . Simple TLDR is that the NAV was $1.63, but was trading at $0.60. Dr Wealth had quite high confidence in the integrity of the underlying assets, since they were largely in (1) investment properties that are yielding good rental, (2) fixed deposits and (3) cash and bank balances. These kind of assets do not need to be marked down deeply when considering their salvage value. 7 months later, buyout offer with a 54% return from entry. Fantastic trade. This reminded me very much of my Saizen REIT trade which saw me realize a total gain (dividends + gain) of 40.4% over about 1.5 years . I consider it as one of my early masterpieces because of just how sure I was that all the evidence is pointing towards good future gains. Yes, I had strong evidence . Now, buying assets at a discount to NAV is a pretty good strategy if it satisfies some criteria: 1) there should be e...
Read more