To be fair with vehicles it can be a little more complex. People's financial situations change quickly but car notes are 5+ years in many cases. A person ends up upside down on their loan so they can't just sell it without having to pay the lender thousands of dollars, or else they trash their credit. Then they have to figure out how to get another car and come up with a down payment for that, or try to save up the cash for a used beater, which costs a lot more than it used to and leaves you with a potentially unreliable car that may need constant costly repairs. Many of these people should've never bought the vehicle in the first place, but I kinda understand why they keep it once they have it, because making just enough payments on it to stay ahead of the repo man is just more feasible than what I described above.