We Plan to Keep My Husband's Car Forever. Here's Why

Keeping our cars for a long time is a key part of our financial plan.

New cars have become very expensive, costing drivers an average of $702 per month. This isn't an expense we have to worry about in our household, though.

While we have two cars, we don't have car loans on either vehicle and we don't plan to anytime soon. In fact, when it comes to one of our two vehicles -- the one my husband drives -- we plan to keep the car forever.

There are three big reasons why that's the case.

1. We would rather spend our money on other things besides new cars

The single biggest reason why we plan to keep my husband's car for as long as possible is because we simply do not place enough value on new cars to make it worth saving money for them.

My husband and I have a rule that we don't borrow for anything that won't increase our net worth over the long term, and cars won't do that. So, if we were going to buy a new car, we would have to save money in order to do so.

We don't want to put a lot of money toward accomplishing this goal since we have other things we'd rather do. Specifically, we prefer to put money into a high-yield savings account to pay for vacations, contribute to our retirement funds, and save for other big purchases.

Since we don't want to worry about saving money for a new car right now, we are going to put off buying one for as long as we can -- hopefully, many years to come.

2. We know cars are a depreciating asset

We also plan to keep my husband's car for a long time because we know that as soon as you buy a car, it starts to lose value right away. There's no sense in spending a lot of money on a new vehicle only to immediately lose thousands of dollars in value when we drive it off the lot.

By keeping his car for an extremely long time, we get our money's worth out of it because it enables him to get to and from work -- and we don't have to worry about trying to resell it soon after purchase for close to what we paid for it. By the time we get rid of his car, it'll probably be sold for salvage parts because it will be so old and worn down that no one will want it.

3. We rarely drive my husband's car

Finally, the last big reason why we plan to keep the car forever is because we try to make sure we almost never drive his vehicle.

My husband takes his car to and from work, and that's about it. If we are going somewhere as a family or he is going somewhere when I'm at home, he will take my car. By limiting how often we drive his car, we make sure that we maintain his vehicle and put very few miles on it so it should last us forever.

This approach works well for us, and if you are also in a two-vehicle household, you may want to think about trying to see if you can limit how often you drive one of your cars so you can also keep it as long as possible. This will allow you to buy new cars far less often in your household so you can devote the money to other things.