Ugh...our first auto loan

[englishteacha]

I posted a week or two ago about my car being dead, but a coworker offering to sell me his excellent condition Lexus for $3k. Well...he decided to keep the Lexus, which meant I had to go car shopping. You know, there's NOTHING in our area for a "cheap" reliable car. We found nothing for under $5K, and most under $10K had 150K miles or more. When we found a 2006 Chrysler Town and Country in excellent condition with reasonable mileage for a price we could live with, we decided to get it. We had to take out our very first auto loan. I'm so glad to now have such a nice vehicle, but it was kind of scary to have to take out a loan. We're 30 and have never had to borrow money for a vehicle. We have a low interest rate and only borrowed what we had to, but it's still nerve wracking to owe the bank money.

Thanks for letting me vent. I know we can pay it off, and we're not in over our heads, but having been debt free (except the house) since college, it's tough to be a borrower again.

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

My van was having issues. $1000 later , it is running. It did have to go in a third time as it was having issues. They checked it and found "nothing", but the issues went away.

I feel your pain. We are NOT debt free and we really cannot do a car loan. But in the frenzy, my husband looked. We require 6 passenger and will not buy anything that isn't. In any case--he found stuff around $15K and it had nearly 100K miles. I just couldn't do it.

Fixing my van is just cheaper for now. And I didn't want to acquire a high mileage vehicle where we would have to learn all of its kinks.

Since you have been responsible with money, use that savvy and snowball that car loan. You'll be debt free again in no time.

 

[Swimalie]

I can relate. My husband and I got married in 1995 each with our own brand new cars. We paid off both loans within 18 months. Since then we have bought 2 more cars and paid cash for both. Now, my car is 11 years old and we're going to get a new one soon.We have the cash to pay cash again but I'm not comfortable with that. So we're looking at financing about half. Not sure I'm happy with a car payment but we did refinance the house last year and saved $230 a month. That money has been going in to the car fund since the refinancing so we will use that as a car payment when we buy the new car.

 

[seashoreCM]

You really need knowledge, perhaps have someone help you, before signing a car loan document.

It is too easy for the dealer to say that your loan was not approved and you have to either pay a higher rate or bring the car back paying car rental rates for the time you had it.

With the documents properly filled out and signed by the dealer before you drive the car home, you won't have that problem.

 

[englishteacha]

We got our loan through our local bank where we do all our banking. Our mortgage is there, and we've been customers since 1998. I'm just kind of bummed that we had to finance to get a good vehicle that we'll get several years out of. We refused to buy a clunker through a private sale. If we wanted a clunker we would have fixed my old car! Our mechanic was up front with us. He was clear that if we sunk the thousands of dollars into my car, we probably would only get a year or so out of it before something else happened that would need thousands of more dollars to repair. We didn't need that!

 

[SookieStackhouse]

It bothers me too to owe money on a car, I got a (new to me) a couple months ago, and I am anxious to pay it off. I chipped a lot off it after selling off a bunch of stuff around here actually that I/we were were not using, I am thinking of taking the rest out of savings and just paying it off so I won't have to worry about it anymore.

I financed mine for 5 years, to get the lowest payments I could, but it is a pain to have that hanging over me. I have like 4.something% interest. I just want to go ahead and get it over with.

 

[englishteacha]

We were saving for a "new" car, knowing ours was older, but we thought sure that the old car would get us through a couple more years. We weren't planning on buying a new-to-us car this soon!