Vox Sentences - How much is too much to pay for a car?

With apologies to your Friday afternoon vibes, I must remind you: Tax Day is nearly here. 

No judgment if you are still working on them – I just signed mine this morning. Vox has lots of resources for my fellow procrastinators: We’ve got what you need to know on filing your taxes, not filing your taxes, refunds, and much more in our guide to tax season.

Whether you’re a last-minute type like me or you filed weeks ago, this time of year forces most of us to step back and look at our personal financial picture. For many Americans, it’s a confounding one, made so by our own ambitions and vices, but also frequently by policy decisions and market forces. If you feel caught off guard by what you’re seeing, confused by how things shook out, or unsure how to make big changes, you certainly aren’t alone. We’ve done lots of recent reporting at Vox shows other people are feeling the same way, and that industry and political decisions have contributed to the current picture. We’ve been on a tear this spring, and now we have a wealth of stories, podcasts, and videos supplying context for everything from college affordability to a TikTok furor over car loans to multilevel marketing and who it sucks in.

Here are some I recommend watching, listening to, and reading (after you submit those returns, of course).

—Natalie Jennings, managing editor

Multigenerational housing is coming back in a big way

“There is a perception that those who live with their parents into their 20s are either bums or people who are not hard-working,” Layla Ahmed, a 22-year-old from Nashville, told the Today, Explained podcast. She’s neither of those things, but she is part of a growing number of adults who are either moving back in with family or never leaving their parents’ home at all. Today Explained’s Noel King, Amanda Llewellyn and Jolie Myers found a few reasons for the uptick, including skyrocketing costs (especially for housing). I came away from listening to and reading about Layla with a view of multigenerational arrangements that’s the inverse of the stereotype: In her and others' cases, it’s a fiscally responsible move that means sacrificing some benefits of young adulthood, and that’s a remarkable showing of maturity in its own way.

The rise of the scammy car loan

Reporter Marin Cogan is the person I want to read on all things cars, including safety, the economics, and the societal structures that make them so necessary in many of our lives. Earlier this year, she broke down exactly what’s behind spiking car insurance rates. More recently, a TikTok about an extremely expensive car loan went viral, essentially asking how $50,000 worth of payments toward an $84,000 loan only resulted in taking $10,000 off the principal. Marin rushed in to explain to the Today Explained newsletter audience how some car payments are “astronomically — indeed, exploitatively — high” and what the FTC is doing to crack down on deceptive auto lending and sales practices. 

🎧 Americans are lured in by the fantasy of financial liberation

There was a period in the mid-2010s when I couldn’t go more than a few days without a young woman asking me to check out a great new cosmetics line with organic ingredients — or heck, to sell them myself. I cringed at my Facebook message queue then, but I also understood the appeal to women who needed flexible hours, saw a social outlet and leapt at an opportunity to top up their finances. I thought of them while listening to the recent episode of The Gray Area in which Sean Illing interviews Jane Mari, host of a podcast series called The Dream and the author of a new book, Selling the Dream, both of which investigate multilevel marketing businesses (MLMs), the wellness industry, and pyramid schemes. Almost no one makes significant money on MLMs, but they persist despite their track record by “going after groups that need that opportunity or that feel they need that opportunity and aren’t given that opportunity by the mainstream marketplace,” according to Jane Marie. That’s a lot of people: She says 1 in 13 Americans have participated in an MLM. According to Illing, “while the people at the top make billions and wield a lot of power, roughly 99 percent of the people who join up don’t make — and often lose — money.” 

📹 Why financial literacy education in the US sucks

Look, I’m not saying it’s Dwight Eisenhower’s fault if you took out a six-figure car loan or tried to recruit your friend to sell self-tanners. But he and other policymakers of his era did de-prioritize financial literacy and “training for adulthood,” according to one study our video team dug up. It was all tied to a midcentury panic among our leaders that the US was falling behind in math and science and that this would put us behind in the space race. As this video explains, “Up until the ’50s and ’60s, money management was a fixture in the public school curriculum” — often a part of home economics classes. It was mostly sidelined in favor of other topics, but in recent years, the pendulum has been swinging back. A number of states have started requiring financial education again, and more are considering it this year. That’s great news for those getting a start on their independent financial lives. For those who have already launched and need to catch up or reboot (’tis the season!), you can watch the rest of the video series, read Nicole Dieker’s excellent On the Money columns, and explore more of Vox’s financial literacy coverage.

This email was sent to you. Manage your email preferences or unsubscribe. If you value Vox’s unique explanatory journalism, support our work with a one-time or recurring contribution.

View our Privacy Notice and our Terms of Service.

Vox Media, 1201 Connecticut Ave. NW, Floor 12, Washington, DC 20036.
Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved.