You do this analysis only if you have to choose between owning a car against spending on other necessities, including saving for retirement. In Singapore, as I said before, the public transportation is of first world standard. This makes car ownership less compelling, more so if one does not earn much. So yes, if spending on a car is going to set you very far back in terms of savings or worse, taking on debts, then you should seriously consider doing without a car. You should ask yourself then whether all the creature comfort that you can derive from owning a car is worth all that money.

I see you came up with a very rough estimate of the money we have supposedly "thrown" away from owning 8 to 9 cars over the course of 27 years. You are very far off the mark, as it is really not that much. You have also forgotten that there was a time where there was no such thing as COE. And we we started with 2nd hand cars. Could you believe we bought 5 year old cars for $25,000? Well we did.

We started buying new cars much later in our lives as we got established in our careers, and always only took minimum 1 year loans to qualify for discount on the car prices.

Undoubtedly we could definitely save more if we just relied on public transportation to move around, but then it begs the question what are you saving all that money for? There comes a point where you decide you have enough money saved for the important things in life and you want to reward yourself as you go along.

Let me ask you in return, would you buy a car if your savings each year allow you to buy 3 new cars? As the COE lasts 10 years, in between buying new cars, we have also bought our second property.

To cut the long discussion short, we feel that the benefits of owning a car far outweigh the cost. If we are earning less, yes, the decision would have been different.