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A few months ago, I bought a car with a loan.

I was surprised to learn that essentially all lenders offer a fixed 8% interest rate... When annual inflation is at least 10% in my country and reserve bank interest rates are on the rise. If it was a variable interest rate, that would present some risk. But it's not even the case. It's literally a fixed 8% annual rate over 5 years (by which point the loan will have been fully paid). So assuming that I can keep my income in line with inflation, it ends up becoming easier to repay my loan as inflation progresses.

It's not quite the same situation for people with real estate mortgages as their rate is variable (or fixed only for a couple of years; so not really fixed when you consider that the loan is 20 to 30 years...) and their repayments increase along with the reserve bank interest rates. My repayments are constant and my debt is being inflated away as we speak.

I bought a basic/small, but good quality car as I think it will hold its value well due to its focus on utility and fuel (cost) efficiency.



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