Bought a used truck
I have to say, nothing ever works out the way I plan it. I won’t say I’m unhappy that it didn’t, but I will say I spent more money on the truck than I’d planned. Here’s the rundown.
We traded in my car for $6,500 (which we had the cash to pay off (about $4400)). We got that trade-in credit against a $12,500 used truck that has about 39,000 miles and is in excellent condition. The reason I’m not all up in arms about the truck with my husband is because I can easily see it as something we can keep longer term, not to mention that we traded in my car for it instead of his. We’re now down to two vehicles. Since my actual gas costs for commuting to my job are reimbursed, I won’t be spending any additional money on gas even though I now drive a vehicle that gets significantly less efficient gas mileage than my previous car.
Money-wise, we ended up with an auto loan of $6,500 or so at 4.79%. There’s no prepayment penalty so we let them make the loan for the standard term they wanted to make it at which was 4 years. I don’t really care, since I’m going to pay it off early anyway, but I like that I still have the option if I want to take it, to pay off a higher interest debt first, because this payment of $148 each month is much less than what my car payment was.
I have to sit down and rework my plans for paying off my debt now, but with the lower payment related to the lower interest rate on my home and the lower auto payment (but still a payment), I will have cash available to put towards other debts.
When I do that, I’ll be sure to post here.
As for the truck, I like it. I’ve never been the primary driver for a truck before and it’s an interesting experience.
The car I owned before was the only vehicle I had ever bought new. I wouldn’t recommend that to anyone, but I have to say, I did like the car and the whole newness of it when I got it. Buying a new car doesn’t make a lot of financial sense though. I’ve also never done a trade in for a vehicle either, because usually you can get $1000+ more for it by selling it yourself than you can by trading it in. In our case this time, we got lucky. The dealer where we got this truck was going out of business because he was having too much trouble getting loans for people wanting to buy automobiles from him. That’s something to keep in mind. Right now is a great time to buy an automobile, if you can get the money you need for it.
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