At a gas station the size of a small town in the American South, a financial content creator named George Kamel recently stopped strangers in the parking lot and asked them a rude question: how much is your car payment?
The answers were remarkable. A father paying nearly $1,000 a month for a Hyundai SUV he bought for his teenage daughter. A 26-year-old paying $590 a month on a used Subaru he is already underwater on - meaning the car is worth less than he owes. A man with a camper on a 15-year loan parked on his son's property. A retired military scientist who paid $80,000 cash for a Corvette and seemed baffled by everyone else.
Kamel, who publishes personal finance content through the Ramsey Network, uploaded the video on April 27, 2026. It has since been viewed nearly 500,000 times. The comments section is a mix of horror, recognition, and dark comedy. One viewer noted that the first man - who opened by describing himself as "very financially responsible" - then explained he had borrowed $38,000 on a car for a teenager at a payment just under $1,000 a month.
The video is funny in the way that a slow-motion car crash is funny. But the numbers behind it are not a punchline. They are a portrait of a structural shift in how Americans relate to the most expensive thing most of them own after their home.
Background
To understand why a $900-a-month car payment is no longer unusual, it helps to understand what happened to car prices over the past five years - and what happened to the money people use to buy them.
During the pandemic, global supply chains - the network of factories, shipping routes, and parts suppliers that gets a car from assembly line to dealership - collapsed. Semiconductor chips, critical to modern vehicles, became scarce. Fewer cars were built. Dealers could not keep inventory on the lot, so they stopped discounting. Prices rose sharply, and consumers, flush with stimulus money and cheap credit, paid them.
When the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates - the cost of borrowing money, set by central banks - in 2022 to fight inflation (the general rise in prices across the economy), car prices did not fall. They kept climbing. The average price of a new car reached a record $50,326 in December 2025, according to Kelley Blue Book data cited by Yahoo Autos. The cost of the vehicle went up. The cost of borrowing to buy it also went up. The monthly payment - the number that actually determines whether someone drives off the lot - went up twice.
Depreciation is what happens to a car's value after you buy it. Most new cars lose roughly 20% of their value in the first year and continue falling from there. When someone borrows more than a car is worth at any given point, they are described as "underwater" - a term borrowed from the mortgage world and now equally at home on a car lot.
The 26-year-old in the Buc-ee's parking lot described this situation without using the term. His used Subaru, bought for around $25,000, is now worth approximately $12,000. He owes $16,000. He is $4,000 underwater and paying 9% annual interest on the difference.
What is actually happening
The average new car payment in the United States hit $800 a month in March 2026, according to JD Power data cited by Yahoo Autos - the first time that figure has crossed the $800 threshold. For context, that is roughly equivalent to the median rent in several Midwestern cities, and more than the monthly grocery bill for many American households.
According to Experian's State of the Automotive Finance Market, the average new car payment in Q3 2025 stood at $748. By Q4 2025 it had risen to $767. The direction of travel has been consistently upward.
What is driving this is not just price. It is the architecture of the loan itself. According to Edmunds, more than 22% of borrowers chose 84-month loans - that is seven years - in Q2 2025, nearly double the rate from six years earlier. Stretching a loan over seven years keeps the monthly payment lower than it would be over five years, but it means paying interest for two extra years on an asset that is simultaneously losing value every month. The average financed amount on an 84-month loan is $50,959. The average down payment on those same loans is $3,660 - roughly 7% of the vehicle's value.
Nearly 20% of new-car buyers are now committing to monthly payments of $1,000 or more, according to Edmunds. The man in the Buc-ee's video paying "mid-$900s" for a Hyundai Palisade, including extended warranty and add-ons rolled into the loan, sits just below that threshold.
The investment calculator moment in the video is worth examining carefully. A 26-year-old investing $590 a month - the same amount he pays on his car loan - for 36 years at the stock market's historical average return of roughly 10% annually would accumulate approximately $2.5 million by retirement. He contributed $250,000 of his own money. The remaining $2.25 million is compound interest - the process by which money earns returns, and those returns then earn returns of their own. The car, over the same period, will be worth nothing.
According to LendingTree, total American auto loan debt has grown from $1.064 trillion in Q4 2015 to $1.667 trillion in Q4 2025 - a 57% increase in a decade. That figure now slightly exceeds total US student loan debt. Americans took out $180.8 billion in new auto loans in the final quarter of 2025 alone.
The money trail
The financial logic of the car dealership showroom is not complicated, but it is worth stating plainly. Dealers make significant margin not on the vehicle's sticker price, which is often negotiated down, but on the financing - the loan arranged through the dealer, which generates commissions from lenders. Extended warranties, gap insurance, paint protection packages, and other add-ons are presented at the moment of peak emotional investment in the purchase, often rolled directly into the loan so the buyer does not feel the upfront cost. The father in the video described feeling "stupid" as he drove away, having bought all of it.
The incentive structure rewards making the monthly payment feel manageable. A salesperson who stretches a loan to seven years and adds $4,000 in warranty products to the balance has likely earned more commission than one who sold the same car on a shorter loan with no extras. The buyer, focused on "can I afford $950 a month," often fails to calculate total cost.
That total cost is striking. At 9% interest over six years, the 26-year-old's $25,000 used car will cost him roughly $30,000 by the time the loan is paid off - assuming he makes every payment on time. For a vehicle already worth half its original price.
The delinquency data tells the downstream story. According to the New York Federal Reserve, the serious delinquency rate - loans more than 90 days past due - reached 5.2% in Q4 2025, approaching the peak of 5.3% recorded during the 2008 financial crisis. The critical difference: the auto loan market is now twice as large as it was then, at $1.67 trillion versus roughly $800 billion. The rate is nearly the same. The absolute number of people in serious trouble is substantially higher.
According to Bankrate, rising insurance premiums are adding further pressure. Full coverage car insurance now costs an average of $225 a month - $2,638 annually - up 12% from the prior year. A buyer paying $950 a month for a Hyundai Palisade is likely paying another $200 or more in insurance on top of it.
According to VantageScore research cited by CBS News, auto loans have gone from the least risky consumer credit product in 2010 to - excluding student loans - the riskiest. Delinquencies that were once concentrated among subprime borrowers are now rising among prime and near-prime borrowers as well, reflecting broad affordability strain rather than a pocket of high-risk lending.
What people are doing about it
Some buyers are opting out entirely. According to Experian data, the share of used-vehicle purchases made in cash rose to 63% in 2025, up from 58% in 2022. The retired military scientist in the video represents one end of this spectrum - someone with accumulated savings who treats luxury vehicles as cash purchases by rule, on the logic that depreciating assets should not be financed. The couple with the 2016 Toyota Highlander bought with cash represents the more common version: years of disciplined saving, a preference for older vehicles, and a principled indifference to loan offers.
Others are stretching the debt out rather than paying it off. The camper owner in the video has a 15-year loan at $600 a month on a vehicle now parked on his son's property. Fifteen years was previously associated almost exclusively with mortgages. Consumer finance platforms are now offering comparable terms on recreational vehicles as a way to lower the headline monthly payment.
The personal finance media space, of which George Kamel's channel is a prominent example, has grown significantly in parallel with the debt problem. Videos framing car payments as opportunity costs - showing compound growth calculators rather than monthly affordability calculators - have attracted large audiences among people who feel trapped in financing cycles. Kamel's channel has 579,000 subscribers as of the video's publication.
Some dealerships are now facing pushback in negotiation rooms from buyers who arrive with loan pre-approvals from credit unions, removing the dealer's financing margin from the transaction entirely. According to LendingTree, credit unions now hold 22.2% of auto loan market share, up from lower levels prior to the rate cycle.
The bottom line
America is financing cars at record prices, on record loan terms, with delinquency rates approaching those of the 2008 financial crisis - but on a market twice as large. The average new car payment is now above $800 a month. Nearly one in five new-car buyers commits to $1,000 a month or more. A 26-year-old paying $590 a month on a used car worth $12,000 is not a cautionary tale at the edges of the market. He is close to the median. The car dealership's business model is built around monthly payment psychology. The compound interest calculator shows what is lost in the process.
Timeline
- Q4 2015 - Total US auto loan debt stands at $1.064 trillion, according to the New York Fed
- 2019 - Total cost of vehicle ownership begins rising; it will climb 48% by end of 2025
- 2020-2021 - Pandemic disrupts semiconductor supply chains; new car production falls sharply; delinquency rates temporarily decline as stimulus programs cushion borrowers
- Q2 2022 - Auto loan serious delinquency rate reaches post-COVID trough of 3.9%; begins rising every quarter thereafter
- 2022 - Federal Reserve begins aggressive interest rate increases to combat inflation; auto loan rates rise in parallel
- Q2 2025 - Edmunds reports that more than 22% of borrowers chose 84-month loans, a new high; nearly 20% of new-car buyers now pay $1,000 a month or more
- January 2025 - Subprime auto loan delinquency hits 6.6%, highest on record since 1994, according to Fitch Ratings
- November 2025 - Bankrate reports late car payments at a 15-year high
- December 2025 - Average new car price reaches record $50,326; average new car payment reaches $767 in Q4, according to Experian
- Q4 2025 - Serious auto loan delinquency rate reaches 5.2%, approaching the 5.3% peak from the 2008 financial crisis; total auto debt reaches $1.667 trillion, per the New York Fed
- March 2026 - Average new car payment crosses $800 for the first time, according to JD Power
- April 27, 2026 - George Kamel publishes "I Asked People at Buc-ee's What Their Car Payment Is" on YouTube; the video accumulates nearly 500,000 views and surfaces real-world examples of the national data
Summary
Who: American car buyers, auto lenders, and personal finance commentator George Kamel
What: Average new car payments have crossed $800 a month for the first time, with nearly one in five buyers paying $1,000 or more. A viral YouTube video captured real payment figures from ordinary buyers at a Texas gas station, illustrating the national trend at the human scale.
When: The data reflects conditions as of early 2026; the video was published April 27, 2026.
Where: United States; the video was filmed at a Buc-ee's travel center, a large gas station chain popular in the American South and Southeast.
Why: A combination of record vehicle prices, persistently high interest rates, longer loan terms, low down payments, and dealer incentive structures that favour financing over outright purchase have created a market where most car buyers are paying more per month than they have ever paid before - often on assets that are simultaneously falling in value.