4 years of work for a Tesla ?

In this post you will learn :

  • How many years of work you need to afford a Porsche?
  • How many years of work you need to afford a Tesla?

Last weekend, I went to a Bachelor Party in Paso Robles. We drove all together there his Tesla. Ludicrous mode was insane, totally insanely fast. Our other friend came with his Porsche 911 (2014), so it seems all my friends do spend a lot of money on their cars.

It made me wonder whether I should buy a Tesla. Then I thought about how many years of work I need to work to pay for this car (or how many extra years before I can realize my FIRE).

Tesla cost : ~100000$

The operating costs for a Tesla are very small, so let's ignore them for now. Especially that I have now solar , I don't really need to buy electricity.

In this post, I calculated my expenses are about 25000$ per year.
If you work, you can make about 100000$ (in Silicon Valley) if not more. Let's take 100000$ as a baseline.

Savings per year table Sum
Income pre-tax $100,000.00
Max 401k $18,000.00 $82,000.00
Tax $28,700.00 $53,300.00
Living expenses $26,000.00 $27,300.00
Total savings per year $27,300.00

Therefore, it seems with 100k$ of salary per year, I can only save about ~27k$. This means, that it would take about 3.7 years of work to afford such a car. If that car last for 10 years, then I would spend 37% of my working paying for this car. This is RIDICULOUS!!!

Now this is an example, why most people don't retire early. Keep your life simple, don't buy stuff you don't need.