Here is a list of the vehicles 10 of the richest people in the world are driving (as of last November).

Jeff Bazos, founder of Amazon: 2013 Honda Accord

Bill Gates: 2008 Ford Focus

Warren Buffett: 2006 Cadillac DTS, but after 10 years of driving it, his daughter convinced him to buy a new one last year

Mark Zuckerberg: Acura TSX with original sticker price of $30k

Larry Page and Sergey Brin: Both founders of Google drive two-year old Priuses

Steve Ballmer: The ex-CEO of Microsoft & owner of the LA Clippers drives a 2010 Ford Fusion

Michael Bloomberg: Chevy Suburban

Jack Ma: The co-founder of Alibaba drives a three-year old Roewer X5

Alice Walton: The daughter of Walmart Founder Sam Walton still drives her 06 Ford F150 with a value of maybe $5k

Hands-down these people can obviously afford any vehicle on the planet. Yet, they choose to all drive something pretty inexpensive in the view of most middle class earners. Rich people don’t buy things that go down in value – a large part of the reason they got rich.

I’m going to keep stating that middle class income people have no chance to build serious wealth with car payments. The math says that there’s just isn’t enough money left over. Payments of $500 to $900 truck payments are after-tax. That means the person is actually spending $700 to $1,300 of gross earnings (less taxes, EI, CPP) on perpetual payments.

Sure, anyone can cut their bills down by a hundred bucks to be able to save a little. But there’s only one change that can leave $700 to $1,300 in your pocket each month – in addition to now having less than half the insurance premiums.