I was in the same position as you, except in regards to buying replacement automobile. My current car will not last another 2 to 4 years, or however long it would take for automobile prices to come back down after a major spike. I am looking back over the COVID period and using that as a predictor of what could happen in the next two years.

AND it is is not pretty. Cars are already way too expensive as it is and adding another 10% to 20% puts buying a car outside of what I am willing to do. Could I make my car last longer? Not without putting a short block in it, which is a $6000 proposition and the car might be worth $7k if it was in mint condition, which it is not. Even if I did replace the engine, it would start having the myriad of “old car problems” over the next few years and just how expensive will parts be?

What are interest rates going to be?

So instead of waiting another 6 months, where I would have enough to pretty much pay cash, I went ahead and bought a car this past Wednesday, but with a lot more financing than I really wanted to do. But with good credit, I got a sub 6% rate, I’ll just pay it off faster so I don’t take a bath on the interest.

Now I have a car, 2019 Camry Hybrid, with 30,000 miles on it that I feel will easily last the next 4 years without much more than maintenance. I kept my old car, I have a teen driver that needs it, and will keep it till he goes to university next August. I’ll keep an eye on the used car market and when I can sell it for a good price, I will. Then use that money to pay off my current car, saving that interest.

Or I might just sell everything, go buy a boat and explore the south Pacific the next 4 years… Who knows.

Basically plan to pinch pennies for at least the next four years.

It’s worth getting familiar with how tarrifs impact the economy in general. This is a good overview in my opinion.

If they actually get implemented? There’s a good chance your prices from anything that touches China will increase by most of the listed tariffs. Since it will disproportionately affect China, it’s possible some stuff will eventually pull manufacturing somewhere else, but that isn’t going to happen overnight. Moving manufacturing is not fast and no one else is equipped to just flip a switch and take over for them.

Your income will likely not increase 60%.

In addition to electronics going up, there’s also the looming End of Life for a lot of older computers because of Windows 10 going end of life/support, and windows 11 having some strict security hardware requirements.

This is going to impact businesses. They are going to gobble up the market. The threat of tariffs has already started some panic buying.

We’re going to see computer prices go up in 2025-2026.

I moved forward on a car purchase because modern cars contain lots of fancy electronics that could and probably will be impacted by tariffs.

I’m not saying you should buy a car that you weren’t otherwise planning to buy, but if you need something in the electronics area, moving it up a few months might not be a terrible idea.

I’d say that unless you absolutely need to upgrade, don’t do it and set it aside to save the money. Money is going to get very tight soon for a lot of essential goods, so having it ready is a good idea for prep. If you never need to dip into it and manage to save some, then it’s possible that you can upgrade later.

Hopefully the rest of the world will benefit from the lack of US buying

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I say upgrade. The tariffs he’s most likely to back off on are food and oil. High tech from Asia is last on the list.

In videocards, nV 3060 likely doubled the output nV 1060 had, and CPUs albeit slower rise in numbers too. New hardware can probably last you a good ten years or more if nothing like an entirely new demanding software happens, like if we’d start to train our AIs locally en masse. Years before the war I bought myself all new components and they are still good at digital art and video rendering, even though I know a bit more modern setup can do it 2-4x quicker. It’s just obligatory smoking breaks that I don’t really mind.

If you were thinking about upgrading anyway, I say do it right now. I personally just bought a new PC and projector/home theater because the ones I had were already old and on the way out. I also plan on buying a new washer/dryer set and brakes for my car, all before 1/20/25, but again, all those things needed replacing anyway.

Where would your new purchases come from? If its Mexico or Canada (or probably China), expect prices to rise very soon and get purchases in before 1/20. If the items come from other countries, you probably can wait a bit but if you know you will need something you may want to buy it now, just in case.

I thrift for a fair number of things so, I’m not that affected. 86% of the things in my apartment are through thrifting. The only things I know I’m going to probably wrestle with at times is groceries and newer things I would actually need like some appliance or something breaks down. It depends.

When has he ever followed through on a promise?