Is buying a certified pre owned Audi a safe and responsible decision? $20,000 budget

I'm a recent college grad not making a ton of money. Currently I lease a 2015 Ford for around $270 a month. My lease is up soon and being that I live in the north east, I'm looking into AWD vehicles. I've only ever had FWD and am considering financing a 2018 Honda Civic but want the reassurance of having AWD. I looked into pre owned audis and many of them are in the $20,000 price range. However, I'm worried that by the time I ll be done paying for it, I ll have an 8 year old luxury car that will be expensive to fix when it has issues. Any opinions?

Nope

You are correct. Get a Subaru.

AWD helps get the car moving but does little for steering and absolutely nothing for braking.

But what will help with accelerating, turning, and stopping are winter tires. A front wheel drive vehicle equipped with a full set of quality winter tires will get you through pretty much anything winter can throw at you as long as you still have ground clearance ( and if you don't have ground clearance, an all wheel drive vehicle will be stuck as well )

As you stated, you are a "recent college grad not making a ton of money" so why are you considering a brand new Honda? Buy a 3 or 4 year old vehicle for less than half the cost of that same model vehicle brand new. Chances are it will be reliable for years and you let someone else take the brunt of the depreciation hit.

All-Wheel-Drive (AWD) is NOT a magical instant cure for driving in winter conditions. It's not like you're going to be driving in knee deep snow every day. I'm sure that the area where you live and drive has snow plows to remove heavy accumulations of snow. A Front Wheel Drive (FWD) car with a good set of all-weather tires is just as good as one with all-wheel-drive for MOST winter weather conditions, and will cost less to own and maintain.

I'm 100% with jetdoc on this one .4wd does not give you any better grip undermost conditions… I have a 4wd mitsubishi. This year is first year in five we have had any snow .yes it did its job .never got stuck in snow… But i could have lost it at any time i wanted to… A fwd car is always better than rwd in snow… Type of tyre is very important. But more than 50% of good control in bad weather is the quality of the driver

No, Audi's have a terrible reliability record. Don't spend your money on one.

Nope, too expensive.

You need to read up on what "Certified Pre-Owned" really means. If often does not mean what you think it does and different dealers have their own versions of it. This sort of "certification" and advertising is not regulated, so it's still "buyer beware. Read and learn:

https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2015/06/are-certified-preowned-cars-worth-it/index.htm
https://www.edmunds.com/car-buying/certified-pre-owned-cars-a-reality-check.html
https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/best-cars-blog/2016/02/what-does-certified-pre-owned-mean

By the way, having AWD or 4WD can give a false sense of security if you have not been trained how to properly handle one in slippery conditions, particularly if it has an anti-lock braking system. All you have to do is take a drive on any miserable winter day and see all the AWD's and 4WD's off the road and wrecked because of ignorant, over-confident drivers. A competently driven FWD vehicle is perfectly adequate in most conditions.

That 'Certified pre-owned' bit is just advertising. Not worth anything.