Recently, I took a trip to Chicago and needed a rental car while I was there.  I found a fabulous deal at Enterprise Rent a Car through  Hotwire.com for a midsized car at only $ 19 per day!

When I arrived at O’Hare Airport, I was given a  BRAND NEW Chevy Malibu–with only 11 miles on it!  It worked like a charm and even better- it smelled like a new car!

I was driving in luxury while still being frugal!

Check out those Hotwire deals!

Remember the rule we have practiced for 32 years–We try to only invest in appreciating assets–NOT depreciating assets.  Because our goal has been to save as much as possible, we have NEVER invested in new cars!

Buying used cars has put loads of extra money in our hands which we used to buy stocks, mutual funds and investment real estate.  We’d rather gain wealth than try to impress other people and make automobile companies richer!

So, in keeping with that philosophy, 3 years ago we purchased a used company car, as it was about to be sent to the auto auction.  The car is a 2002 Ford Taurus, it has 170,000 miles on it and we only paid a couple thousand dollars for it.  It’s not super pretty, but it gets us where we want to go!

We figure we have saved $12,600 on that car in the past 3 years, since the average car payment is about $350 per month times 36 months = $12,600.  Invest that money for 20 years and you’d have almost $60,000 if you could earn 8% on the money!  The car still runs, so we are continuing to save money each month!

We’ll take the money rather than the new car or the admiring glances!

Click here to calculate what you can save.