About two weeks ago, he put his Mazda RX-7 for sale on Craigslist and finally had one viewer two nights ago. He wanted to sleep on it and see other cars but came back and said he wanted our car since it was in great condition (meaning, not roached!). Why is it that Americans treat their expensive or classic cars like garbage? My dad did that with his ancient Austen Healey and Viper. Yes my dad had old cars. He never drove any of them but it did collect dust, had oil leaking issues and piles of newspapers in it. It was quite gross, even I admit. Such a nice car just trashed. I also find it funny when people store their $10-60 items in the garage and their $40,000 cars outside. Ha! Good ole Americans we are!
Anyhow, this guy who was pretty large for this small car bought it. Guess he really liked it. We used 67% of the funds to pay off his loan on his 2004 Nissan Titan. Now we can save $310 every month and use it for ... oh... fixing his smurf step which I swear is gonna break someone's ankle soon as it pops off, fix his rusted muffler (yeah, florida cars)... and I dunno, put $150 into savings. Either way it's totally fab! I was ecstatic that he was willing to put all that money into paying off something! I didn't think he would but he totally came through.
I think it helped for him to talk to his co-workers about their car payments. One guy makes $1,100 in total car payments, $700 for his wife's Lexus and $200 for his and $200 more for his sons!! His son doesn't pay for his own car?! That is totally wack. Talk about teaching kids to be dependent on their parents for paying off their debts. When my hubby heard the $1,100 number, he felt this immediate relief when he sent the final check to the lenders. Of course they are going to say you owe us $5 in interest that accrued from the time we posted pay off amount on this date to the time we actually received your check, but that is okay! No biggie. So what if we owe an extra $5.00. We don't owe $310.79 anymore! We can live more comfortable and within our means now.
Our monthly loan repayment amounts were $832 and now they are $521. It's a huge drop. We still have his dad's $400 to pay off that we borrowed from him and IRS Taxes. After that it should be like $200 in Student Loans. Then we can tackle that and pay that off as soon as realistically possible. It's in the 110,000 range and slowly growing because our minimum payment isn't even covering the principal yet.. we've paid $9,000 or so in interest alone since 2012... nuts. Oi vey. But... save that for a new day. Not today. I'm just so happy we get our Title soon and can finally spend some money on fixing the poor truck. It really is in excellent condition despite those two issues I mentioned earlier (muffler and smurf step).
Okay well this was the easiest way to pay something off... you gotta sell something big in order to reap the reward later. Selling small items work too but they take so much time and effort it's almost like a second job. Best thing to do is open a separate account (from your spouse) and put all your selling profits into that account. Wait for it to add up to a certain number that you are willing to pay and it will help. That or you could just use those extra funds as a savings account. It all depends how you want to tackle (and if you really want to tackle) your finances.
Also when you pay off your vehicle, other costs are reduced. Our car insurance on the vehicle for 6 month term is $258. Once we show them the Title I will advise what the new insurance cost is. The car insurance cost has already been reduced by $30 by selling his Mazda convertible. So paying off the vehicle really does help, especially if you have another one that you can sell to pay off (or pay down a large amount) of the own that's owed.
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