8 ms·

US car repossessions surge as more Americans default on auto loans

167 points by Physkal 11mo ago

geor9e 11mo ago
Where do these cars get sold? Sounds like it will be a good time to buy a new-ish used car soon.
- prawn 11mo ago
  Auctions. Sometimes bought by private buyers, sometimes by dealers who then on-sell them. Government and corporate fleet vehicles are usually sold at auction as well, likely mandated after a few years or mileage figure.
insane_dreamer 11mo ago
The irony that Trump won the election in large part because he promised lower prices.
dijit 11mo ago
It's an extremely inconvenient situation that Americans find themselves in, a sort of self-perpetuating cycle of car dependency that they reinforce because alternatives require far too much investment to make worthwhile. I'm really glad that I can live in a city without having to own a car if I don't want to. It makes a significant difference to my monthly expenses. And, honestly, it's a lot nicer and feels a lot more free in many ways. Places are more accessible not less. I can't imagine being on the bottom rung of society and having yet another awkward expense, especially because you become unreliable if you don't properly invest in the maintenance of the thing. Which might cause you to lose your income altogether.
- bcrosby95 11mo ago
  For lots of America alternatives don't take that much investment. Creating a safe bike network would be relatively cheap and is feasible in large swaths of suburbs.
  - Iwan-Zotow 11mo ago
    > Creating a safe bike network would be relatively cheap and is feasible in large swaths of suburbs hard to do biking if there is 33C outside with sun in top of it
  - dijit 11mo ago
    Due to the aforementioned car dependence: points of interest are further apart from each other than in other cities with solid cycling infrastructure (in Europe for example). Enormous car-lots several times larger than the buildings that they serve for example, sprawling 6-lane roads that take 20s to clear a junction on a slow moving bicycle, these things contribute to it being infeasible for more poeple. Connecting the bike lanes is not a problem, though people will fight it tooth and nail because they wan't all infrastructure spending to go to cars... hence, reinforcing the issue, because when all you have is a hammer...
    - bcrosby95 11mo ago
      Yes, they are further apart than they need to be, but they still tend to be within relatively short cycling distance. At certain times cycling is even faster than driving due to gridlock traffic, even in suburbs. For example, this very moment, because the main way through town is clogged with parents picking their kids up from school. I think a majority of the problem is cultural and/or political. I know people who take a longer drive over a shorter bike ride (due to gridlock traffic).
    - oblio 11mo ago
      Bikes can reach remarkably far in flat areas if the infrastructure is there. And with a folding bike you only need 1 bus as a range extender to go really far. However lots of money is relying on both those things not happening.
- Retric 11mo ago
  It doesn’t take that much to for huge numbers of people to be able to transfer to car free existence. Zoning laws inside cities do a amazing amount to force cars on millions of Americans. Car free access to existing transit hubs like metro stations is often horrible and not particularly expensive to improve.
  - supertrope 11mo ago
    Cities could create bus and bike lanes literally overnight. Load up a truck with concrete parking curbs and cones and drop them. No one is going to bike until the infrastructure makes it safe and convenient. Like safe enough to let a kid or 65 year old woman bike. We just choose to continue subsidizing a triangle of car dependency. The government finances toll-free roads, mandates parking minimums, and enforces restrictive zoning. Businesses and real estate consumers pick up the tab on the real cost of free parking (higher rents and mortgages, parking garage construction costs). Drivers pour money into car loans, insurance, maintenance, and fuel.
    - deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
- arjvik 11mo ago
  > if you don't properly invest in the maintenance of the thing For me, it's not the money that's annoying (though of course I'm not pleased by the bills every once in a while). It's the amount of time it takes to keep a car maintained! Seems like just yesterday I took a whole day remote to sit at the mechanics shop for a tire change, but now I have to do the same for an oil change! For this precise reason I end up doing a lot of maintenance late.
  - hyghjiyhu 11mo ago
    I haven't done it myself but isn't a tire change suppose to be pretty easy thing to do, certainly better than sitting the whole day in the shop?
    - maxerickson 11mo ago
      Usually it involves swapping the new tires onto the rims. It's not easy to do.
      - MegaDeKay 11mo ago
        Plus balancing the new tires on those rims, and next to nobody has the gear to do that.
        Ccecil 11mo ago
        When I last priced the equipment it wasn't that bad costwise. In my case though it was only worth it to get rid of the whole "dealing with tire shops" issue. A close friend owns a used car dealership and they bought the mounter and balancer. IIRC...it just needed a 240v line. I have also lost days waiting for tire shops and alignment...as those are the only 2 things I don't do myself.
        potato3732842 11mo ago
        A tire machine is life changing in a good way if you have a lot of cars you're responsible for. China is starting to make mid-market ones (simple pneumatic ones that are powered bug geared to home use rather than professional like the ~$1k electric machines) for ~$400ish that I'd take seriously if I was in the market Once you have a tire machine you'll spend more time at the tire shop (outside business hours, lol) because their trash pile will be your best source for reasonably new used tires. They sell a lot of sets of 4 when 2 would do.
- ifyoubuildit 11mo ago
  I'm glad you have that opportunity too, but purely on the financials it's probably not so much of a win when you consider the heightened cost of everything (housing in particular) in a city, right?
  - SecretDreams 11mo ago
    Depends when you got into it. If you're an older gen, you got into that city early and are likely unburdened by high dwelling costs - instead, you've got a windfall of appreciation ahead of you. Reality is, outside of housing, city life is generally cheaper because it's much more accessible and the tax base is better suited to covering those expenses. So, older generations get the best of all worlds, per usual.
    - carabiner 11mo ago
      > Outside of housing > Outside of what makes it more expensive for virtually everyone, it is actually cheaper
      - SecretDreams 11mo ago
        Pull up the age demographics for any major city. The older demographics largely got into housing at more affordable times and are less sensitive to rent and mortgage prices increasing. Housing costs is a cost that OVERWHELMINGLY impacts younger demographics.
  - 999900000999 11mo ago
    Depends on the city. Chicago is cheaper than car dependent LA in terms of rent. You can do very well on a modest salary.
  - dangus 11mo ago
    You don’t have to be in a large or even a medium sized city for car dependency to be alleviated. There’s a not just bikes video about this exact thing. https://youtu.be/ztpcWUqVpIg https://youtu.be/ztpcWUqVpIg
- jeffbee 11mo ago
  Converting away from cars costs almost nothing compared to continuing cars. The project to put California route 37 above water near the Sonoma-Marin County line is going to cost $10 billion without adding any capacity. That's one tiny little project. And people don't even want to attach a number to the external cost of pollution.
- itsme0000 11mo ago
  It’s honestly becoming a national subculture. Being a “burnout”. In tech burnout means you’re exhausted on working on things. In America “a burnout” is someone so deeply in debt they don’t even try to really pay it off, they just ignore the debt and spend money on cheap thrills when they can. Obviously not something that you advertise about yourself, but go to any bar in rural south and they know what am talking about. As bad as the debt situation is in the US there’s not much a collection agency can do to force you to pay relatively petty sums under 100,000 they will just harass you basically. The Roman proverb goes “The begger laughs in the face of the bandit” so burnouts spread money before it can be taken from them, then turn around and beg for more. A person who’s established this mentality, the exact amount they owe is the least of there problems.
- rayiner 11mo ago
  This is an extremely privileged viewpoint. Even in Tokyo, people in the bottom half of the income distribution do not live close enough to popular transit lines to be as mobile as someone with a beater car in Dallas. They spend a lot more time commuting (and they can’t “just do some work on the train” because they have real jobs). Even in Tokyo, their commutes are crowded, they’re subject to the weather. Being tied to transit lines—again, because even in Tokyo transit isn’t as convenient as point-to-point car travel—limits where people can look for jobs. That makes it a poverty trap because people can’t easily find jobs in different areas. And it makes having a family and kids much more logistically complicated. The most transit-dependent cities have abysmal birth rates.
  - dijit 11mo ago
    It's only privileged because I'm living in a city that has actively prioritised other modes of transport. I invite you to compare Orlando and Malmo. If you have the opportunity to visit both, I would recommend it. They have the same population size (actually, Malmo has more people in it, but, close enough) yet in one it's impossible to get across the street without a car, even to go to the grocery store, and the other has entire portions of the city where cars aren't even able to go. -- Yet everyone manages to get around, and most people would consider it very convenient to do so.
    - hollerith 11mo ago
      If I need to work to earn a living and working remotely in Europe for an American company were not an option (for some strange reason) I'd rather live in Orlando. I admit that Europe tends to be a nicer place to live for those who have enough savings that they do not need to work and for those too sick to work.
      - dijit 11mo ago
        I don't speak Swedish and I'm perfectly fine living and working here. The level of English speaking in Malmö often exceeds the ability to speak English in places in the UK. Ironically. Why would you rather live in Orlando? I presume you've been to both places.
- gensym 11mo ago
  It sucks that you need to own a car to get anywhere in most of the US. When my wife and I moved to Southern California from Chicago, we had a single car and tried to make that work for a while, but it was just not doable. We have a grocery store 2 miles away, but any other services are further than walking distance (and even the grocery store requires walking on the shoulder of a busy arterial road at a couple points. I used to bike everywhere in Chicago, but doing so here is too risky). That said, the problems of car loans are far beyond that - From the article: " The average monthly repayment now stands at more than $750.". That's nuts! I make a solid upper middle-class income, and I can't imagine spending that much on car financing, regardless of the loan length. When we needed a second car, we bought a 6-year-old Volvo station wagon in good condition, it it's still serving us well. Many of my neighbors, who make about half what I do, think we're poor because of it.
  - dehugger 11mo ago
    Our solution to this was two cars, with one being a tiny well used EV (2015 Fiat 500E) where the range boils down to "dont leave town". Its a fantastic city car. 50% to full is about 3 hour on a 120v wall charger, and that's enough juice to run around our town for a ~week for all kinds of errands. The other car is a 2023 Leaf with the extended range trim, which is sufficient to get us all around the PNW, although I would hesitate to take it east of the Cacades.
  - oblio 11mo ago
    If the Volvo us well taken care of, it will probably last decades more.
  - ryandrake 11mo ago
    Exactly. This is going to come off as incredibly privileged, but I'm not a huge fan of car loans. In fact, I'm not a huge fan of leveraging to afford any asset unless it's appreciating in value or generating income. I buy and drive old, nearly junker cars because I can't afford a $40K new car. I can "afford" the monthly payments on a $40K car, but it's just a terrible financial idea. Totally nutty. A $750 monthly payment (I don't even want to know the term) for something that is losing value every day is absolutely bonkers. The amount of debt Americans routinely and causally take on is honestly ridiculous.
- potato3732842 11mo ago
  Being on the bottom rungs is actually a lot cheaper than "HN style" car ownership. Nobody expects your shitbox to be legal, or have compliant papers all the time. You're blue collar so you know people who wrench and trade favors here and there. Boss expects you to be late a few times a month. There's a "welfare cliff" when you try to get into a "must have reliable transportation" job though
  - supertrope 11mo ago
    Lower end jobs tend to be unforgiving on not planting your butt in seat at the scheduled time. I find the higher end your job the less BS you are forced to endure. e.g. No drug tests, no doctor's note to justify sick leave. If there's a layoff there's severance. Flex time. There are some accommodations for poor drivers. Politicians loath to raise fuel tax. This shifts costs of roads from drivers onto general taxpayers. Car insurance limits are the same as in the 1970s. This shifts cost of accidents from poor drivers onto accident victims who are not fully compensated. Emissions testing and safety testing is either not done at all or waived for drivers who claim hardship.
jfengel 11mo ago
I'm surprised it has taken this long. Everything I thought I knew about economics (and basic finance) has pointed in the direction of imminent pain for consumers, but what I've been hearing is more of a dull ache at most. I don't want a crisis, and if we avert one I'll happily update my beliefs. But even if the crisis comes I'll have to figure out why it has been so slow.
- nine_zeros 11mo ago
  It took long because during the last Trump era, lenders figured out a neat trick - extend the loan terms to 7 years instead of the conventional 5. That, and the low interest rates hooked people. This exaggerated during the pandemic with people taking insane $1000/month loans. Trump comes back, downturn comes back to main street, and voila - loans running naked.
- electric_muse 11mo ago
  You’re probably underestimating how much credit is available to people. Having money issues? Keep paying your car while you borrow money from Klarna for your DoorDash chipotle.
  - SecretDreams 11mo ago
    It's a game of musical chairs. Very fun until the music stops!
  - Terr_ 11mo ago
    Even as someone who barely cooks, I can't fathom the apparent popularity of DoorDash etc. versus the extra cost you have to pay.
    - jmathai 11mo ago
      My son wanted to DoorDash a burrito from chipotle. I told him to look at the final price and compare it to chipotles website. The $8 burrito is listed on doordash’s website for $11 + a delivery fee they were waiving for a first order (not sure what it would have been).
scotty79 11mo ago
I wonder ... who are they gonna send the repossessed cars to? I think old models of operation are breaking down.
- JohnFen 11mo ago
  They're typically sold at auction to dealers and individuals. If there's a flood of them, that means that they'll cost less at auction and the prices in the used car market may start coming back down from the crazy heights they've been at.
- jagged-chisel 11mo ago
  Doesn’t really matter. The borrower is still on the hook for the balance after sale.
  - scotty79 11mo ago
    The borrower didn't have the money to pay. Being "on the hook" doesn't mean much if you simply don't have any money. It's a mini sub-prime in the making.
- Ekaros 11mo ago
  Depends on who is operating higher up in value ladder probably ends up in auctions by lenders. But lower cases it is revolving system. Where the seller takes vehicle back and sells it again. Sometimes multiple times...
themafia 11mo ago
> almost two decades after problems in the sub-prime mortgage lending market Exceedingly dishonest. It was problems in the CDO market. > "When you see one cockroach, there are probably more,” Jamie Dimon, Exceedingly ironic.
harmmonica 11mo ago
As if I need to make another comment about a, or multiple bubbles, but something has to give and here it's of course the consumer. New and used car prices are at all-time highs (nominal it sounds like, but tell that to someone whose wages haven't kept pace (i.e., almost everyone)). Housing prices are at all-time highs (in terms of price:income so no qualifier needed there). Tariffs are not being 100% eaten by the producers (duh), nor by the importers (double duh), and so the consumer is being hit by those. Health care costs are about to rise materially as we flip to 2026 for large swaths (all?) of the US population. Any tax relief seen by the average consumer is likely not even close to enough to counterbalance all the increased prices/costs. HN is fond of saying that the only thing propping up the US economy at this point is AI investment (not informed enough to know if that's actually true, but outside of equity prices it sure seems like everything else is blinking "this economy sucks."). So when will the music stop? Seems like it should've been "yesterday," but what's the argument for it to continue playing for the foreseeable future? The great wealth transfer? AI efficiency/productivity gains (without the vast elimination of jobs)? Something else?
- carabiner 11mo ago
  We've got an insane bubble right now. Quantum computing stocks are valued at $50b market cap with 0 revenue and no substantial finished products. Just research.
  - Ekaros 11mo ago
    Remember when "unicorn" companies were a big deal. Billion was significant amount of valuation and money. Lately it really feels like billion is pretty much nothing anymore. There has been inflation, but not that much to really make billion to be small sum.
    - ryandrake 11mo ago
      The high end seems to be wildly out of control. We have $trillion+ companies now, and we are likely to see the world's first individual USD trillionaire within the next 12 months.
mupuff1234 11mo ago
Maybe now is finally the time to short CVNA.
- Den_VR 11mo ago
  You think so? Owner financed car loans and repossessions are incredibly profitable, typically the value of the car 3-4 times over. Or so I’ve been told by someone in that business.
- Fade_Dance 11mo ago
  Nice knowing you.
elmerfud 11mo ago
One thing the article doesn't mention is deportees. The administration always says illegal immigrants but when you look the vast majority that are being deported are documented people here under some allowed process, they just haven't been granted a green card yet. Documented immigrants have work permits, social security cards, all the thing to find housing, get jobs, engage in banking etc... When they're picked up and going to be deported, do you think they're going to care about their car loan, home mortgage or credit card debt? Not even a little bit. I had a friend here awaiting asylum for 7 years. She was picked up by ICE, sat for 3 months in detention, finally just agreed to leave because that's was long enough to be evicted by her apartment (and get significant fees for it) be defaulted on her credit cards, and on her car loan. Who pays for all that debt, in excess of $20,000 for everything. She never will, she goes to another country, finds a decent paying job because she has years of experience in the US and now speaks English. All very valuable skills to a lot of employers in central and south America. Expect to see a lot more loans being defaulted on. We were lied to about the number of illegals. Now we're going to see the effect of deporting people who were working, participating in the economy, and happy to be here. All because the lies saying they were illegal.
- throwway120385 11mo ago
  > We were lied to about the number of illegals. Remember this the next time someone starts trying to shit-stir about an invisible group of people here.
- morkalork 11mo ago
  There was a meme (most likely fake) post on reddit from an H1b holder who took out as many lines of credit as they could and left after the whole fee debacle. But there's that dark kernel of truth inside: if your job prospects in the country are wrecked, what's stopping people from cashing in on the way out?
- throwawaypath 11mo ago
  >One thing the article doesn't mention is deportees. The administration always says illegal immigrants but when you look the vast majority that are being deported are documented people here under some allowed process, they just haven't been granted a green card yet. Documented != legal, one can be documented and an illegal immigrant. If you have a deportation order with a final date in the past, you are a documented illegal immigrant. If you're unlawfully in the US due to overstaying your visa, you are a documented illegal immigrant. Practically every case in the past year has proven out to be the person deported was illegal. >Documented immigrants have work permits, social security cards, all the thing to find housing, get jobs, engage in banking etc... Yet they can still be illegal immigrants. >do you think they're going to care about their car loan, home mortgage or credit card debt? The vast majority of illegal immigrants being deported have none of those things. All cash. >Who pays for all that debt, in excess of $20,000 for everything. She never will, she goes to another country Car gets repossessed, house gets foreclosed. The majority have miniscule or nonexistent credit card debt. Less than a rounding error for the economy as a whole. Their deportation will increase housing supply, which reduces rent and home prices though! >We were lied to about the number of illegals. ... All because the lies saying they were illegal. No we weren't. They are illegal.
maxerickson 11mo ago
This has more numbers: https://www.lendingtree.com/auto/debt-statistics/ https://www.lendingtree.com/auto/debt-statistics/ The main pattern is that people are paying a lot for cars. Looks like a lot of 6 year+ loans in the new market.
- jeffbee 11mo ago
  Imagine having a credit score of 300 and a $542/mo loan payment on a used car. Cursed. Americans need buses more than ever.
  - Izikiel43 11mo ago
    I live in a city with lots of buses, they are great. The problem is that they are neuropsychiatric units on wheels, there is always some crazy person being clinically crazy (like talking to imaginary friends), so that makes the whole ride something you don't want to experience often if possible.
    - jeffbee 11mo ago
      Eh, that discourse is usually being advanced by people who never ride the bus, don't intend to start riding it, and have a personal interest in selling you a car. In real transit preference surveys, and historical outcomes, it is clear that people would ride a bus that goes to their destinations, comes often and reliably, and is reasonably priced, without regard to how many mental cases are aboard. So if a transit agency faces a choice of spending limited resources on policing the inside of the vehicle for lunatics, or adding a bus to the schedule, they should always choose the latter.
      - baggy_trough 11mo ago
        “it is clear that people would ride a bus that goes to their destinations, comes often and reliably, and is reasonably priced, without regard to how many mental cases are aboard” If you believe this, it would be cause to doubt your sanity.
      - 11mo ago
micromacrofoot 11mo ago
Also worth noting the average new car is now $50k and the average new car loan is $40k+ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/10/17/50000-new-car-price-record/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/10/17/50000-new... Starting to find out the risks of a car-centric society in a slow-burn economic crisis.
- olyjohn 11mo ago
  Yeah the average is high, that means there are cars cheaper than that. People are spending big because they either are doing no researchand getting suckered, or they are buying nicer cars for vanity reasons.
  - micromacrofoot 11mo ago
    The average has gone up because we have fewer cheap cars than ever
  - mothballed 11mo ago
    Or it's the only thing available. A few years ago my car was totaled by an uninsured illegal in a hit and run, and I was forced to get another one (bought used). This was back when the bubble was even worse, and since I lived on dirt roads, I needed a 4x4. Literally the only thing I could find not clapped out were luxury models, because rich people were about the only people at the time dumping cars that weren't completely clapped out.
  - toomuchtodo 11mo ago
    Automakers realized during the pandemic they could increase prices and reduce production and come out ahead. Import tariffs means you are, as a consumer, held captive by a domestic market to extract from you for your potentially non discretionary personal transportation needs. If you must have a car, the price is the price. This has slowly been changing as of recently, but now tariffs are eating into automaker balance sheets to the tune of ~$30B, which will have to come from somewhere in transaction volume.
  - kotaKat 11mo ago
SeanAnderson 11mo ago
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DRCLACBS https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DRCLACBS consumer loan delinquencies up a lot in the last couple of years, tapered over the last year, low relative to historic norms https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DRCCLACBS https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DRCCLACBS credit card delinquencies are similar https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DRSFRMACBS https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DRSFRMACBS home loans delinquencies look amazing right now, to the surprise of noone, since everyone is sitting happy having locked in their 3% rates a few years back. My understanding is that Tricolor went under due to systemic fraud ("The core of the fraud allegations is that Tricolor illegally used the same loan portfolios as collateral for separate credit lines with multiple banks" to the tune of ~$200M) First Brands also went under due to fraud ("First Brands had relied on billions of dollars in undisclosed debt, primarily from the private credit market, by borrowing against its invoices. This practice, known as factoring, kept the debt off the company's official balance sheet") Yes, things feel tighter than they did in the years immediately post-Covid because there was a lot of free $ in the system, a lot of debt collections were paused, and Covid went on long enough for people to start treating that as the new normal when that was never going to be the case. No, I don't see these as canaries for a 2008-esque event. The scary thing to keep an eye on is commercial office space debt (e.g. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/HPP/ https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/HPP/) which is likely to cause a cascade of fire sales as 5/10 yr debt obligations come due and how that will have cascading effects on commercial bank loans. That will be a hairy situation, but, fortunately, once it passes, rents in downtown areas will plummet and there will be a huge surge in growth in response to more favorable rents. Right now, commercial rents are locked into untenable rates because the loans are contingent on those rates which is resulting in 30%+ unused commercial space in areas like downtown SF.
- watersb 11mo ago
  > Right now, commercial rents are locked into untenable rates because the loans are contingent on those rates Let me get this straight. A landlord cannot lower the rent, because they took out a loan on the property which promised to the lender that the rent is a particular amount? > which is resulting in 30%+ unused commercial space in areas like downtown SF. The loan prevents the landlord from lowering the rent, so the landlord realizes rental income of $0 on the property. Oh, that's just great.
lurk2 11mo ago
Related: U.S. Consumers Are Collapsing: Cars, Credit, & the Chaos Ahead | The Weekly Wrap - Steve Eisman (Steve Carell’s character from The Big Short) interviews Lakshmi Ganapathi. Uploaded 2025-10-03. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd7akdDtPXA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd7akdDtPXA
dragant 11mo ago
Funny how a lot was going really well thanks to the last administration. Full employment, hot economy, and administration going after the billionaires. Wow...so much has changed in a year. We piss off the world, we implement tariffs hapharzardly, car and car prices soar and the rich get richer. Brace yourself....
Yizahi 11mo ago
I once clicked on a YT video about irresponsible debts, apparently it's a popular genre there, don't do it or you'll get a flood of these for a few weeks minimum. The interesting note I saw there was that apparently in USA car credits are now reaching into 7 and 8 years length (from typical maximum of 5 or so) and their rates are reaching well into 20% or higher. And that's not on a housing, that's on depreciating expensive cars. Another new idea for me was the fact that people with car debt, are doing "trade-in" of sorts, giving up old unpaid car for a newer better one, with an even bigger total debt. That was really eye opening stuff.
derf_ 11mo ago
> "Distress in auto lending broadly is often seen as a bellwether to changing circumstances in the US economy, because Americans particularly in the lower-income brackets tend to put their highest priority in auto payments," said Brett House... Or, put another way, when the bills come in, people make their car payments first, because they have to get to work. So either there are other bills people aren't paying, or people aren't going to work. Both seem bad. One purported cause of increased auto loan defaults is that people are having to make student loan payments again, although that would suggest they aren't prioritizing the auto payments.
autoexec 11mo ago
This goes way beyond the high price of cars or people taking out loans with bad terms. Americans are struggling all over. Rent is skyrocketing. Inflation is applying massive pressure on regular expenses. Household debt is at an all time high. People all over the country are struggling to keep their utilities connected as energy prices soar. Foreclosures are surging. Individual chapter 7 bankruptcy filings are up 15% from last year too. It's really no wonder repossessions are spiking too. Economically, things look pretty bleak for a huge percentage of Americans and I'm not seeing much to convince me that they're going to get better any time soon.
- chneu 11mo ago
  And yet Americans are door dashing more than ever and financing everything imaginable. Not saying citizens deserve this but we eagerly gobble up every excuse possible and then complain that our lifestyles aren't sustainable. The typical American lifestyle is based around excess. It's no surprise that a nation who spends 3x more on unnecessary garbage than any other nation is struggling financially as climate change makes that excess more expensive. We do this to ourselves with our pride/ego fixation and our endless excuses for why someone else should fix things or someone else is responsible for it. We don't vote. We don't think critically. We don't do the hard work to benefit our society long term. We buy into every possible excuse.
  - autoexec 11mo ago
    I think it has more to do with stagnating wages which haven't kept up with inflation (or for that matter productivity) than it does with irresponsible spending. The growing number of people who can barely keep the lights on aren't spending all their income on door dash. They're cutting back on groceries, going to food banks (who have seen record demand) and being forced to resort to Buy Now Pay Later loans for regular groceries (14% more than they were last year https://www.cbsnews.com/news/buy-now-pay-later-bnpl-loans-groceries/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/buy-now-pay-later-bnpl-loans-gr...)

167 points by Physkal 11mo ago

geor9e 11mo ago

Where do these cars get sold? Sounds like it will be a good time to buy a new-ish used car soon.

prawn 11mo ago
Auctions. Sometimes bought by private buyers, sometimes by dealers who then on-sell them. Government and corporate fleet vehicles are usually sold at auction as well, likely mandated after a few years or mileage figure.

insane_dreamer 11mo ago

The irony that Trump won the election in large part because he promised lower prices.

dijit 11mo ago

It's an extremely inconvenient situation that Americans find themselves in, a sort of self-perpetuating cycle of car dependency that they reinforce because alternatives require far too much investment to make worthwhile. I'm really glad that I can live in a city without having to own a car if I don't want to. It makes a significant difference to my monthly expenses. And, honestly, it's a lot nicer and feels a lot more free in many ways. Places are more accessible not less. I can't imagine being on the bottom rung of society and having yet another awkward expense, especially because you become unreliable if you don't properly invest in the maintenance of the thing. Which might cause you to lose your income altogether.

bcrosby95 11mo ago
For lots of America alternatives don't take that much investment. Creating a safe bike network would be relatively cheap and is feasible in large swaths of suburbs.
- Iwan-Zotow 11mo ago
  > Creating a safe bike network would be relatively cheap and is feasible in large swaths of suburbs hard to do biking if there is 33C outside with sun in top of it
- dijit 11mo ago
  Due to the aforementioned car dependence: points of interest are further apart from each other than in other cities with solid cycling infrastructure (in Europe for example). Enormous car-lots several times larger than the buildings that they serve for example, sprawling 6-lane roads that take 20s to clear a junction on a slow moving bicycle, these things contribute to it being infeasible for more poeple. Connecting the bike lanes is not a problem, though people will fight it tooth and nail because they wan't all infrastructure spending to go to cars... hence, reinforcing the issue, because when all you have is a hammer...
  - bcrosby95 11mo ago
    Yes, they are further apart than they need to be, but they still tend to be within relatively short cycling distance. At certain times cycling is even faster than driving due to gridlock traffic, even in suburbs. For example, this very moment, because the main way through town is clogged with parents picking their kids up from school. I think a majority of the problem is cultural and/or political. I know people who take a longer drive over a shorter bike ride (due to gridlock traffic).
  - oblio 11mo ago
    Bikes can reach remarkably far in flat areas if the infrastructure is there. And with a folding bike you only need 1 bus as a range extender to go really far. However lots of money is relying on both those things not happening.
Retric 11mo ago
It doesn’t take that much to for huge numbers of people to be able to transfer to car free existence. Zoning laws inside cities do a amazing amount to force cars on millions of Americans. Car free access to existing transit hubs like metro stations is often horrible and not particularly expensive to improve.
- supertrope 11mo ago
  Cities could create bus and bike lanes literally overnight. Load up a truck with concrete parking curbs and cones and drop them. No one is going to bike until the infrastructure makes it safe and convenient. Like safe enough to let a kid or 65 year old woman bike. We just choose to continue subsidizing a triangle of car dependency. The government finances toll-free roads, mandates parking minimums, and enforces restrictive zoning. Businesses and real estate consumers pick up the tab on the real cost of free parking (higher rents and mortgages, parking garage construction costs). Drivers pour money into car loans, insurance, maintenance, and fuel.
  - deleted 11mo ago
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arjvik 11mo ago
> if you don't properly invest in the maintenance of the thing For me, it's not the money that's annoying (though of course I'm not pleased by the bills every once in a while). It's the amount of time it takes to keep a car maintained! Seems like just yesterday I took a whole day remote to sit at the mechanics shop for a tire change, but now I have to do the same for an oil change! For this precise reason I end up doing a lot of maintenance late.
- hyghjiyhu 11mo ago
  I haven't done it myself but isn't a tire change suppose to be pretty easy thing to do, certainly better than sitting the whole day in the shop?
  - maxerickson 11mo ago
    Usually it involves swapping the new tires onto the rims. It's not easy to do.
    - MegaDeKay 11mo ago
      Plus balancing the new tires on those rims, and next to nobody has the gear to do that.
      - Ccecil 11mo ago
        When I last priced the equipment it wasn't that bad costwise. In my case though it was only worth it to get rid of the whole "dealing with tire shops" issue. A close friend owns a used car dealership and they bought the mounter and balancer. IIRC...it just needed a 240v line. I have also lost days waiting for tire shops and alignment...as those are the only 2 things I don't do myself.
        potato3732842 11mo ago
        A tire machine is life changing in a good way if you have a lot of cars you're responsible for. China is starting to make mid-market ones (simple pneumatic ones that are powered bug geared to home use rather than professional like the ~$1k electric machines) for ~$400ish that I'd take seriously if I was in the market Once you have a tire machine you'll spend more time at the tire shop (outside business hours, lol) because their trash pile will be your best source for reasonably new used tires. They sell a lot of sets of 4 when 2 would do.
ifyoubuildit 11mo ago
I'm glad you have that opportunity too, but purely on the financials it's probably not so much of a win when you consider the heightened cost of everything (housing in particular) in a city, right?
- SecretDreams 11mo ago
  Depends when you got into it. If you're an older gen, you got into that city early and are likely unburdened by high dwelling costs - instead, you've got a windfall of appreciation ahead of you. Reality is, outside of housing, city life is generally cheaper because it's much more accessible and the tax base is better suited to covering those expenses. So, older generations get the best of all worlds, per usual.
  - carabiner 11mo ago
    > Outside of housing > Outside of what makes it more expensive for virtually everyone, it is actually cheaper
    - SecretDreams 11mo ago
      Pull up the age demographics for any major city. The older demographics largely got into housing at more affordable times and are less sensitive to rent and mortgage prices increasing. Housing costs is a cost that OVERWHELMINGLY impacts younger demographics.
- 999900000999 11mo ago
  Depends on the city. Chicago is cheaper than car dependent LA in terms of rent. You can do very well on a modest salary.
- dangus 11mo ago
  You don’t have to be in a large or even a medium sized city for car dependency to be alleviated. There’s a not just bikes video about this exact thing. https://youtu.be/ztpcWUqVpIg https://youtu.be/ztpcWUqVpIg
jeffbee 11mo ago
Converting away from cars costs almost nothing compared to continuing cars. The project to put California route 37 above water near the Sonoma-Marin County line is going to cost $10 billion without adding any capacity. That's one tiny little project. And people don't even want to attach a number to the external cost of pollution.
itsme0000 11mo ago
It’s honestly becoming a national subculture. Being a “burnout”. In tech burnout means you’re exhausted on working on things. In America “a burnout” is someone so deeply in debt they don’t even try to really pay it off, they just ignore the debt and spend money on cheap thrills when they can. Obviously not something that you advertise about yourself, but go to any bar in rural south and they know what am talking about. As bad as the debt situation is in the US there’s not much a collection agency can do to force you to pay relatively petty sums under 100,000 they will just harass you basically. The Roman proverb goes “The begger laughs in the face of the bandit” so burnouts spread money before it can be taken from them, then turn around and beg for more. A person who’s established this mentality, the exact amount they owe is the least of there problems.
rayiner 11mo ago
This is an extremely privileged viewpoint. Even in Tokyo, people in the bottom half of the income distribution do not live close enough to popular transit lines to be as mobile as someone with a beater car in Dallas. They spend a lot more time commuting (and they can’t “just do some work on the train” because they have real jobs). Even in Tokyo, their commutes are crowded, they’re subject to the weather. Being tied to transit lines—again, because even in Tokyo transit isn’t as convenient as point-to-point car travel—limits where people can look for jobs. That makes it a poverty trap because people can’t easily find jobs in different areas. And it makes having a family and kids much more logistically complicated. The most transit-dependent cities have abysmal birth rates.
- dijit 11mo ago
  It's only privileged because I'm living in a city that has actively prioritised other modes of transport. I invite you to compare Orlando and Malmo. If you have the opportunity to visit both, I would recommend it. They have the same population size (actually, Malmo has more people in it, but, close enough) yet in one it's impossible to get across the street without a car, even to go to the grocery store, and the other has entire portions of the city where cars aren't even able to go. -- Yet everyone manages to get around, and most people would consider it very convenient to do so.
  - hollerith 11mo ago
    If I need to work to earn a living and working remotely in Europe for an American company were not an option (for some strange reason) I'd rather live in Orlando. I admit that Europe tends to be a nicer place to live for those who have enough savings that they do not need to work and for those too sick to work.
    - dijit 11mo ago
      I don't speak Swedish and I'm perfectly fine living and working here. The level of English speaking in Malmö often exceeds the ability to speak English in places in the UK. Ironically. Why would you rather live in Orlando? I presume you've been to both places.
gensym 11mo ago
It sucks that you need to own a car to get anywhere in most of the US. When my wife and I moved to Southern California from Chicago, we had a single car and tried to make that work for a while, but it was just not doable. We have a grocery store 2 miles away, but any other services are further than walking distance (and even the grocery store requires walking on the shoulder of a busy arterial road at a couple points. I used to bike everywhere in Chicago, but doing so here is too risky). That said, the problems of car loans are far beyond that - From the article: " The average monthly repayment now stands at more than $750.". That's nuts! I make a solid upper middle-class income, and I can't imagine spending that much on car financing, regardless of the loan length. When we needed a second car, we bought a 6-year-old Volvo station wagon in good condition, it it's still serving us well. Many of my neighbors, who make about half what I do, think we're poor because of it.
- dehugger 11mo ago
  Our solution to this was two cars, with one being a tiny well used EV (2015 Fiat 500E) where the range boils down to "dont leave town". Its a fantastic city car. 50% to full is about 3 hour on a 120v wall charger, and that's enough juice to run around our town for a ~week for all kinds of errands. The other car is a 2023 Leaf with the extended range trim, which is sufficient to get us all around the PNW, although I would hesitate to take it east of the Cacades.
- oblio 11mo ago
  If the Volvo us well taken care of, it will probably last decades more.
- ryandrake 11mo ago
  Exactly. This is going to come off as incredibly privileged, but I'm not a huge fan of car loans. In fact, I'm not a huge fan of leveraging to afford any asset unless it's appreciating in value or generating income. I buy and drive old, nearly junker cars because I can't afford a $40K new car. I can "afford" the monthly payments on a $40K car, but it's just a terrible financial idea. Totally nutty. A $750 monthly payment (I don't even want to know the term) for something that is losing value every day is absolutely bonkers. The amount of debt Americans routinely and causally take on is honestly ridiculous.
potato3732842 11mo ago
Being on the bottom rungs is actually a lot cheaper than "HN style" car ownership. Nobody expects your shitbox to be legal, or have compliant papers all the time. You're blue collar so you know people who wrench and trade favors here and there. Boss expects you to be late a few times a month. There's a "welfare cliff" when you try to get into a "must have reliable transportation" job though
- supertrope 11mo ago
  Lower end jobs tend to be unforgiving on not planting your butt in seat at the scheduled time. I find the higher end your job the less BS you are forced to endure. e.g. No drug tests, no doctor's note to justify sick leave. If there's a layoff there's severance. Flex time. There are some accommodations for poor drivers. Politicians loath to raise fuel tax. This shifts costs of roads from drivers onto general taxpayers. Car insurance limits are the same as in the 1970s. This shifts cost of accidents from poor drivers onto accident victims who are not fully compensated. Emissions testing and safety testing is either not done at all or waived for drivers who claim hardship.

jfengel 11mo ago

I'm surprised it has taken this long. Everything I thought I knew about economics (and basic finance) has pointed in the direction of imminent pain for consumers, but what I've been hearing is more of a dull ache at most. I don't want a crisis, and if we avert one I'll happily update my beliefs. But even if the crisis comes I'll have to figure out why it has been so slow.

nine_zeros 11mo ago
It took long because during the last Trump era, lenders figured out a neat trick - extend the loan terms to 7 years instead of the conventional 5. That, and the low interest rates hooked people. This exaggerated during the pandemic with people taking insane $1000/month loans. Trump comes back, downturn comes back to main street, and voila - loans running naked.
electric_muse 11mo ago
You’re probably underestimating how much credit is available to people. Having money issues? Keep paying your car while you borrow money from Klarna for your DoorDash chipotle.
- SecretDreams 11mo ago
  It's a game of musical chairs. Very fun until the music stops!
- Terr_ 11mo ago
  Even as someone who barely cooks, I can't fathom the apparent popularity of DoorDash etc. versus the extra cost you have to pay.
  - jmathai 11mo ago
    My son wanted to DoorDash a burrito from chipotle. I told him to look at the final price and compare it to chipotles website. The $8 burrito is listed on doordash’s website for $11 + a delivery fee they were waiving for a first order (not sure what it would have been).

scotty79 11mo ago

I wonder ... who are they gonna send the repossessed cars to? I think old models of operation are breaking down.

JohnFen 11mo ago
They're typically sold at auction to dealers and individuals. If there's a flood of them, that means that they'll cost less at auction and the prices in the used car market may start coming back down from the crazy heights they've been at.
jagged-chisel 11mo ago
Doesn’t really matter. The borrower is still on the hook for the balance after sale.
- scotty79 11mo ago
  The borrower didn't have the money to pay. Being "on the hook" doesn't mean much if you simply don't have any money. It's a mini sub-prime in the making.
Ekaros 11mo ago
Depends on who is operating higher up in value ladder probably ends up in auctions by lenders. But lower cases it is revolving system. Where the seller takes vehicle back and sells it again. Sometimes multiple times...

themafia 11mo ago

> almost two decades after problems in the sub-prime mortgage lending market Exceedingly dishonest. It was problems in the CDO market. > "When you see one cockroach, there are probably more,” Jamie Dimon, Exceedingly ironic.

harmmonica 11mo ago

As if I need to make another comment about a, or multiple bubbles, but something has to give and here it's of course the consumer. New and used car prices are at all-time highs (nominal it sounds like, but tell that to someone whose wages haven't kept pace (i.e., almost everyone)). Housing prices are at all-time highs (in terms of price:income so no qualifier needed there). Tariffs are not being 100% eaten by the producers (duh), nor by the importers (double duh), and so the consumer is being hit by those. Health care costs are about to rise materially as we flip to 2026 for large swaths (all?) of the US population. Any tax relief seen by the average consumer is likely not even close to enough to counterbalance all the increased prices/costs. HN is fond of saying that the only thing propping up the US economy at this point is AI investment (not informed enough to know if that's actually true, but outside of equity prices it sure seems like everything else is blinking "this economy sucks."). So when will the music stop? Seems like it should've been "yesterday," but what's the argument for it to continue playing for the foreseeable future? The great wealth transfer? AI efficiency/productivity gains (without the vast elimination of jobs)? Something else?

carabiner 11mo ago
We've got an insane bubble right now. Quantum computing stocks are valued at $50b market cap with 0 revenue and no substantial finished products. Just research.
- Ekaros 11mo ago
  Remember when "unicorn" companies were a big deal. Billion was significant amount of valuation and money. Lately it really feels like billion is pretty much nothing anymore. There has been inflation, but not that much to really make billion to be small sum.
  - ryandrake 11mo ago
    The high end seems to be wildly out of control. We have $trillion+ companies now, and we are likely to see the world's first individual USD trillionaire within the next 12 months.

mupuff1234 11mo ago

Maybe now is finally the time to short CVNA.

Den_VR 11mo ago
You think so? Owner financed car loans and repossessions are incredibly profitable, typically the value of the car 3-4 times over. Or so I’ve been told by someone in that business.
Fade_Dance 11mo ago
Nice knowing you.

elmerfud 11mo ago

One thing the article doesn't mention is deportees. The administration always says illegal immigrants but when you look the vast majority that are being deported are documented people here under some allowed process, they just haven't been granted a green card yet. Documented immigrants have work permits, social security cards, all the thing to find housing, get jobs, engage in banking etc... When they're picked up and going to be deported, do you think they're going to care about their car loan, home mortgage or credit card debt? Not even a little bit. I had a friend here awaiting asylum for 7 years. She was picked up by ICE, sat for 3 months in detention, finally just agreed to leave because that's was long enough to be evicted by her apartment (and get significant fees for it) be defaulted on her credit cards, and on her car loan. Who pays for all that debt, in excess of $20,000 for everything. She never will, she goes to another country, finds a decent paying job because she has years of experience in the US and now speaks English. All very valuable skills to a lot of employers in central and south America. Expect to see a lot more loans being defaulted on. We were lied to about the number of illegals. Now we're going to see the effect of deporting people who were working, participating in the economy, and happy to be here. All because the lies saying they were illegal.

throwway120385 11mo ago
> We were lied to about the number of illegals. Remember this the next time someone starts trying to shit-stir about an invisible group of people here.
morkalork 11mo ago
There was a meme (most likely fake) post on reddit from an H1b holder who took out as many lines of credit as they could and left after the whole fee debacle. But there's that dark kernel of truth inside: if your job prospects in the country are wrecked, what's stopping people from cashing in on the way out?
throwawaypath 11mo ago
>One thing the article doesn't mention is deportees. The administration always says illegal immigrants but when you look the vast majority that are being deported are documented people here under some allowed process, they just haven't been granted a green card yet. Documented != legal, one can be documented and an illegal immigrant. If you have a deportation order with a final date in the past, you are a documented illegal immigrant. If you're unlawfully in the US due to overstaying your visa, you are a documented illegal immigrant. Practically every case in the past year has proven out to be the person deported was illegal. >Documented immigrants have work permits, social security cards, all the thing to find housing, get jobs, engage in banking etc... Yet they can still be illegal immigrants. >do you think they're going to care about their car loan, home mortgage or credit card debt? The vast majority of illegal immigrants being deported have none of those things. All cash. >Who pays for all that debt, in excess of $20,000 for everything. She never will, she goes to another country Car gets repossessed, house gets foreclosed. The majority have miniscule or nonexistent credit card debt. Less than a rounding error for the economy as a whole. Their deportation will increase housing supply, which reduces rent and home prices though! >We were lied to about the number of illegals. ... All because the lies saying they were illegal. No we weren't. They are illegal.

maxerickson 11mo ago

This has more numbers: https://www.lendingtree.com/auto/debt-statistics/ https://www.lendingtree.com/auto/debt-statistics/ The main pattern is that people are paying a lot for cars. Looks like a lot of 6 year+ loans in the new market.

jeffbee 11mo ago
Imagine having a credit score of 300 and a $542/mo loan payment on a used car. Cursed. Americans need buses more than ever.
- Izikiel43 11mo ago
  I live in a city with lots of buses, they are great. The problem is that they are neuropsychiatric units on wheels, there is always some crazy person being clinically crazy (like talking to imaginary friends), so that makes the whole ride something you don't want to experience often if possible.
  - jeffbee 11mo ago
    Eh, that discourse is usually being advanced by people who never ride the bus, don't intend to start riding it, and have a personal interest in selling you a car. In real transit preference surveys, and historical outcomes, it is clear that people would ride a bus that goes to their destinations, comes often and reliably, and is reasonably priced, without regard to how many mental cases are aboard. So if a transit agency faces a choice of spending limited resources on policing the inside of the vehicle for lunatics, or adding a bus to the schedule, they should always choose the latter.
    - baggy_trough 11mo ago
      “it is clear that people would ride a bus that goes to their destinations, comes often and reliably, and is reasonably priced, without regard to how many mental cases are aboard” If you believe this, it would be cause to doubt your sanity.
    - 11mo ago

micromacrofoot 11mo ago

Also worth noting the average new car is now $50k and the average new car loan is $40k+ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/10/17/50000-new-car-price-record/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/10/17/50000-new... Starting to find out the risks of a car-centric society in a slow-burn economic crisis.

olyjohn 11mo ago
Yeah the average is high, that means there are cars cheaper than that. People are spending big because they either are doing no researchand getting suckered, or they are buying nicer cars for vanity reasons.
- micromacrofoot 11mo ago
  The average has gone up because we have fewer cheap cars than ever
- mothballed 11mo ago
  Or it's the only thing available. A few years ago my car was totaled by an uninsured illegal in a hit and run, and I was forced to get another one (bought used). This was back when the bubble was even worse, and since I lived on dirt roads, I needed a 4x4. Literally the only thing I could find not clapped out were luxury models, because rich people were about the only people at the time dumping cars that weren't completely clapped out.
- toomuchtodo 11mo ago
  Automakers realized during the pandemic they could increase prices and reduce production and come out ahead. Import tariffs means you are, as a consumer, held captive by a domestic market to extract from you for your potentially non discretionary personal transportation needs. If you must have a car, the price is the price. This has slowly been changing as of recently, but now tariffs are eating into automaker balance sheets to the tune of ~$30B, which will have to come from somewhere in transaction volume.
- kotaKat 11mo ago

SeanAnderson 11mo ago

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DRCLACBS https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DRCLACBS consumer loan delinquencies up a lot in the last couple of years, tapered over the last year, low relative to historic norms https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DRCCLACBS https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DRCCLACBS credit card delinquencies are similar https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DRSFRMACBS https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DRSFRMACBS home loans delinquencies look amazing right now, to the surprise of noone, since everyone is sitting happy having locked in their 3% rates a few years back. My understanding is that Tricolor went under due to systemic fraud ("The core of the fraud allegations is that Tricolor illegally used the same loan portfolios as collateral for separate credit lines with multiple banks" to the tune of ~$200M) First Brands also went under due to fraud ("First Brands had relied on billions of dollars in undisclosed debt, primarily from the private credit market, by borrowing against its invoices. This practice, known as factoring, kept the debt off the company's official balance sheet") Yes, things feel tighter than they did in the years immediately post-Covid because there was a lot of free $ in the system, a lot of debt collections were paused, and Covid went on long enough for people to start treating that as the new normal when that was never going to be the case. No, I don't see these as canaries for a 2008-esque event. The scary thing to keep an eye on is commercial office space debt (e.g. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/HPP/ https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/HPP/) which is likely to cause a cascade of fire sales as 5/10 yr debt obligations come due and how that will have cascading effects on commercial bank loans. That will be a hairy situation, but, fortunately, once it passes, rents in downtown areas will plummet and there will be a huge surge in growth in response to more favorable rents. Right now, commercial rents are locked into untenable rates because the loans are contingent on those rates which is resulting in 30%+ unused commercial space in areas like downtown SF.

watersb 11mo ago
> Right now, commercial rents are locked into untenable rates because the loans are contingent on those rates Let me get this straight. A landlord cannot lower the rent, because they took out a loan on the property which promised to the lender that the rent is a particular amount? > which is resulting in 30%+ unused commercial space in areas like downtown SF. The loan prevents the landlord from lowering the rent, so the landlord realizes rental income of $0 on the property. Oh, that's just great.

lurk2 11mo ago

Related: U.S. Consumers Are Collapsing: Cars, Credit, & the Chaos Ahead | The Weekly Wrap - Steve Eisman (Steve Carell’s character from The Big Short) interviews Lakshmi Ganapathi. Uploaded 2025-10-03. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd7akdDtPXA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd7akdDtPXA

dragant 11mo ago

Funny how a lot was going really well thanks to the last administration. Full employment, hot economy, and administration going after the billionaires. Wow...so much has changed in a year. We piss off the world, we implement tariffs hapharzardly, car and car prices soar and the rich get richer. Brace yourself....

Yizahi 11mo ago

I once clicked on a YT video about irresponsible debts, apparently it's a popular genre there, don't do it or you'll get a flood of these for a few weeks minimum. The interesting note I saw there was that apparently in USA car credits are now reaching into 7 and 8 years length (from typical maximum of 5 or so) and their rates are reaching well into 20% or higher. And that's not on a housing, that's on depreciating expensive cars. Another new idea for me was the fact that people with car debt, are doing "trade-in" of sorts, giving up old unpaid car for a newer better one, with an even bigger total debt. That was really eye opening stuff.

derf_ 11mo ago

> "Distress in auto lending broadly is often seen as a bellwether to changing circumstances in the US economy, because Americans particularly in the lower-income brackets tend to put their highest priority in auto payments," said Brett House... Or, put another way, when the bills come in, people make their car payments first, because they have to get to work. So either there are other bills people aren't paying, or people aren't going to work. Both seem bad. One purported cause of increased auto loan defaults is that people are having to make student loan payments again, although that would suggest they aren't prioritizing the auto payments.

autoexec 11mo ago

This goes way beyond the high price of cars or people taking out loans with bad terms. Americans are struggling all over. Rent is skyrocketing. Inflation is applying massive pressure on regular expenses. Household debt is at an all time high. People all over the country are struggling to keep their utilities connected as energy prices soar. Foreclosures are surging. Individual chapter 7 bankruptcy filings are up 15% from last year too. It's really no wonder repossessions are spiking too. Economically, things look pretty bleak for a huge percentage of Americans and I'm not seeing much to convince me that they're going to get better any time soon.

chneu 11mo ago
And yet Americans are door dashing more than ever and financing everything imaginable. Not saying citizens deserve this but we eagerly gobble up every excuse possible and then complain that our lifestyles aren't sustainable. The typical American lifestyle is based around excess. It's no surprise that a nation who spends 3x more on unnecessary garbage than any other nation is struggling financially as climate change makes that excess more expensive. We do this to ourselves with our pride/ego fixation and our endless excuses for why someone else should fix things or someone else is responsible for it. We don't vote. We don't think critically. We don't do the hard work to benefit our society long term. We buy into every possible excuse.
- autoexec 11mo ago
  I think it has more to do with stagnating wages which haven't kept up with inflation (or for that matter productivity) than it does with irresponsible spending. The growing number of people who can barely keep the lights on aren't spending all their income on door dash. They're cutting back on groceries, going to food banks (who have seen record demand) and being forced to resort to Buy Now Pay Later loans for regular groceries (14% more than they were last year https://www.cbsnews.com/news/buy-now-pay-later-bnpl-loans-groceries/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/buy-now-pay-later-bnpl-loans-gr...)