‘You are denied, denied, denied’: Suze Orman says cars are now a ‘huge financial risk’ as drivers make the same mistakes

Buying a car has always meant budgeting, but Suze Orman warns that millions of Americans are treating car payments like a forever bill. Instead of saving for retirement or building an emergency cushion, people are rolling from one payment to the next — and it’s quietly wrecking their long-term finances.

In a blog post published at the end of May, the personal finance author and podcast host calls cars a “financial danger zone” and issues a blunt warning: keeping up the habit of rolling negative equity into new loans is locking people into a cycle of perpetual debt.

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“You think it’s no big deal to just keep trading in and rolling over negative equity into a new loan,” (1)she wrote (1). “I am telling you it is a huge problem.”

The car market seems to justify Orman’s point. The average price of a new car hit a record $50,326 in December 2025, according to Kelley Blue Book (2), and the average monthly payment for a new car reached $767 in Q4 2025, up 2.8%, according to Experian statistics collated by Lending Tree (3). Car prices are getting more expensive and Americans are taking on more loans just to buy those cars. 20.3% of new-car loans now carry monthly payments above $1,000 (4).

Orman says some of this is genuinely out of consumers’ hands. Affordable cars have mostly disappeared from U.S. showrooms and used-car prices are still stuck at elevated levels after the pandemic-era supply shortage (5). But she also says plenty of drivers are making the problem worse by adding a self-inflicted layer of debt.