I’m spending close to $1,000/yr to keep my 2009 car on the road and that beats $1,000/month by a long shot.

We’re paying the last payment on my wife’s car this month. We’ve been getting calls and emails from the dealership telling us what a prefect time it would be to upgrade. One night the gummies kicked in and I decided to reply to the clearly automated and canned email. It was dripping with snark, along the lines of “I’ll never buy a car because an email prompted me to”. Got a call the next day from the dealership where they apologized… and then went right into a sales pitch.

A record share of Americans — more than 20% — agreed to pay more than $1,000 per month for a new car loan at the end of the year, according to car sales site Edmunds.