Cheap Audi, Expensive Lesson: A Financial Time Machine
Audi. B8 generation. Singapore. Cheap.
Words that shouldn’t be in a sentence together, let alone a purchase.
In 2020, I bought an Audi A4, the B8 generation, from Singapore. Any car enthusiasts reading this are probably face-palming so hard right now. Audis from that era are notorious for being unreliable, and Singapore used cars have a reputation of their own.
When I was buying it, the importer was like, “Are you sure you want a German used car from Singapore?”
The price was too good, and it would arrive earlier than one sourced from Japan, so I was like I have done my research. Looking back, that was a huge red flag 🚩.
I drove the car for about eight months. Then it was dead. And it cost me a lot of money, both buying it and trying to keep it running. A story for another day.
But it got me thinking. What if I had invested that money somewhere else? Around that time I was also thinking about getting into farming, but I never went for it, because we’ve all heard the matikiti stories and the whole “kilimo cha whasapu” thing.
Then, I was reminded of a TZS 610 dividend SMS notification I got from NMB. I became a shareholder after my dad passed and I got a share from his modest estate which I didn’t cash out. Getting that small dividend just for sitting at home made me think, what if I had taken the money I spent on the Audi and put it into NMB shares instead?
So, I built a calculator over a weekend to find out. I pulled 10 years of data from african-markets.com and compared NMB (for obvious reasons) and CRDB since it fits a similar profile.
The results shocked me. If I had invested that Audi money into NMB in 2020, it would have grown by 653% by today. Instead, I was left with a dead car.
So yeah, sharing my regret over the Audi. Going back, would I have still bought the Audi? Hell yeah, but probably a Japanese import, and definitely not that generation 😂. But at least now I make sure to set aside some monthly earnings to shore up my stock portfolio.
If you want to check your own “what-if” scenarios, I turned the calculator into a financial time machine: https://whatifstocks.kadyanji.com
What’s the worst depreciating asset you’ve ever spent money on?
Footnote: Money markets like UTT, and other shares, would be an interesting add-on to this comparison. As always, it’s worth engaging a CFA or a licensed stockbroker before making any investment decision.