Car Loans?
 

Just curious, does anybody have a serious car loan? I've been kicking around the idea of getting something to play with and I don't mind doing a car loan since I don't have one. But I modeled a couple of loans and dam! I don't want to pay more than $350 a month and to get any size of a loan it would have to drag out for 4-5 years. How the heck can some people afford these $35-45K cars and SUV's and be making $500-700 a month payments? My mortgage payment takes at least half my monthly income so a car payment would leave me with very little after gas and food.

My loan is real cheap. We paid around $11K after takes and stuff for my '01 Cherokee, and put down $5K. My payments are a whopping $135 a month for 5 years. Good thing, since my mortgage is almost both of my paychecks per month.

We found a killer deal on our 00 Lincoln LS8 ($10900) and financed $13.5 and out payments are only like $255 a month for four years.

Find a good deal on what you want and a good interest rate and you're set.

That's the thing, no way I'm doing a 4 or 5 year loan. I've only had 3 car loans in my 20+ years of driving and the longest one was 3 years around $300 a month. The others were 2 year loans around $350 a month.

well jeff...36monthsX300=10800.00 lol what do you expect? thats not including interest. If you want a 30K car your gonna pay 30k payments for a long time :) my credit union sets up bi weekly payments which cuts the interest by a lot...something to look into if your serious.

fwiw 40k loan for 5 years at 5.99%=773.13 roughly with 60 monthly payments

that same 40k loan for 5 years at 5.99 with biweekly payments=$356.42 payments...so its like a $70 savings every month...which might allow you the room to do a 4 year loan for just about the same price.

I"m paying $285 a month, $1800 down, financed ~$13k, 5 year loan. 02 Hyundai Elantra

That's kind of my point. $773 a month car payment plus a $1500-2000 a month mortgage payment! Add new car insurance plus gas and it must mean that most of these people driving new $35-40K cars/trucks are making $200K a year! Oh, and a lot of them have new toys like WaveRunners and ATV's. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that my 4Runner keeps running well until I can get my JL8 done. I guess the bad situation for me is that the only running vehicle I have is worth $2500 so if I did want to buy something newer it would mean I'd have no real trade in.

well we arent all single income families :) my wife takes care of the mortgage ie heloc which is $950/mo for the next ~4 years...I take care of everything else...I just dont buy new...i would be less then 10% of the people on this site bought their most recent car new. I suggest you look at demo's or something 1 or 2 years old thats still got a good portion of its factory warranty left.

I know most of the people on this site didn't buy their car new. I'm just saying how difficult it is to get a new car. Buying a first time house is even more ridiculous. You could buy a house for $150K back when we bought our house. Today you can't find anything in our area under $375K! But there are plenty of brand new cars on the road. I'm guessing most of them are leases. I know my dad leases a new car every 3 years. So it's like having an infinite car payment that stays in the same range every month.

dunno what to tell ya other then your absolutly right about new car prices being rediculous...thats why i havent bought new since 98 when i bought my s-10...well most know how that turned out :lol: so i just end up buying cars a few years old with avg mileage at good prices and go from there.

i bought my SS brand new in summer of 2001, just mainly cause i wanted a car that was mine and only mine, sticker was 32k, i got it for 28.9k, after taxes fees and financing it was like 35k, i put 11k down and financed the remaining 24k. my payments were 422 a month for 5 years. i saved up here and there and back in feb. i paid it off early, after 3 1/2 years. I also had my motorcycle payments since summer 2002. And 2 months ago i just paid off the bike as well. it feels good not to have payments anymore, but in like 2 years, itll be a mortgage payment to deal with, oh well. you gotta pay to play.