Half of your cost is your $50k car choice, though, and doesn't include resale value of around $15k (I'm looking at 2013 highlander prices. It's probably more because you chose a bunch of upgrades, see below). Drops your yearly costs by $1.5k right there.
Get a reasonable car for $25k-35k and your costs drop significantly. Hell, your $50k number means you chose to have a bunch of upgrades. The base MSRP is $36k, and I'm seeing dealer advertised prices of $37k near me. I have to go all the way up to the "Platinum" tier to find $50k prices.
Thank you. I am extremely happy with my purchase and it's well worth the cost.
My point to the GP was that it's trivially doable to get to 10k a year ballpark car cost without doing anything too crazy.
If you are curious, it's a hybrid XLE with AWD. I wanted the hybrid, AWD is standard here in the north east and XLE is the lowest model that comes with (fake) leather seats which we wanted due to having small kids.
Get a reasonable car for $25k-35k and your costs drop significantly. Hell, your $50k number means you chose to have a bunch of upgrades. The base MSRP is $36k, and I'm seeing dealer advertised prices of $37k near me. I have to go all the way up to the "Platinum" tier to find $50k prices.