Not all solutions are for everybody. Since you are getting married a factor may be how you will run your joint finances. Talk to the future wife to be. A lot of your generation are buried in debt. At your financial level you have to watch out for errors.

Harder to recover from them is the issue. That is the reason I will not sell a used car to a young fellow unless I am pretty positive it will last many years yet in all likelihood. I will have it scrapped first otherwise.

Inflation saved us or made life easier in many ways long ago because wages rode upward fast with it. Inflation is always there at usually a reasonble rate. We may be entering a heavier inflating period. It is yet to be seen if wages will rise in a somewhat lockstep pattern with it.

Would I buy a tdi? No way for several reasons. We have purchased one tdi loaded new. Can I write a cheque for one? Yes.

Right now the Japanese label cars are doing just fine. They are what they are with no suprises. They have some resale value as well. Our way of doing things is not for everybody again though.

An earlier poster on this thread is buying a ford with the 1.6 double turbo engine. Same as one of our daughters did last year. That is fords current engine that is reputed to have problems. I have no ideal of the percentage that do or what the exact problems are. I have heard this mentioned more than once.