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I highly recommend to anyone who comes wandering into this thread to avoid having a car payment, if at all possible. I'm on the hook for mine for another 3 years (if I don't make extra payments at all) and it sucks. Buy what you can for cash unless you're in dire straits. My old car was needing $300 repairs on a monthly basis for about 5 months, so for that amount of money I could have driven something new and far more reliable. That was my logic for buying my new car. Now, I still have over $8K in debt to pay off from it when I could have kept the old car and been debt free--even with costly repairs factored in I'm sure I wouldn't have had a $300 repair every month for 3, 4, or 5 years. I plan on buying my current car until it dies, or until I have enough in cash + trade to replace it with nothing needing to be financed.  Edited to add: Also, when I bought my car, all I had for a down payment was my trade, since I was newly out of college and broke. If you must finance, at least have the good sense to have a huge down payment so that either your monthly payment is reduced, or you don't have to finance over 60 months to make it affordable like I did. 
Hip Hoptimus Prime fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Oct 11, 2009 |
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Oct 11, 2009 21:48
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| # ¿ Apr 30, 2024 02:31 |
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I hate car maintenance costs.  I am over 35,000 miles now, and I need to drive home for Thanksgiving next month, so I definitely want to get new brakes, my alignment adjusted, and new rear tires (I replaced the front ones this month, they were bald). Where I live there thankfully isn't much snow but 600 miles north is a different story. And I'm not too excited about getting in an accident on the way, or while I'm there, because I was cheap. Soooo...next month, all that gets done.
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Oct 16, 2009 23:39
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hobbesmaster posted:And the OEM tires were really bald at 35k? Did he not rotate his tires ever or something? Guilty as charged. I'm making sure I'll always do that from now on. Being female + cars don't mix.  My brakes *seem* OK, but my alignment is pretty off (i.e. I veer off to the right if I let go of the steering wheel). I could do without having it done though. It's just annoying me. Edit: spelling that I caught way after I posted. Hip Hoptimus Prime fucked around with this message at 18:11 on Oct 17, 2009 |
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Oct 17, 2009 01:45
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hobbesmaster posted:If it takes a while for your car to veer off then everything should be ok. If you're fighting a bit then something is off. Having evenly worn tires helps out a ton. Your brakes should be ok until about 60k or so? If you don't hear the squeal from the disc brake indicators the pads should be fine, if you don't feel pulsating under the brake pedal the discs should be fine. Another thing to watch for is sponginess, this indicates air in the lines. I'm not hearing squealing and I can stop just fine so that probably means my brakes are good to go. Yay.  I do get oil changes every few months. I do know that those are important. Haha. I'm going to get one next month so that I'm good for my drive home for Thanksgiving. I have a 2007 Chevy Cobalt. I haven't had any major issues with it since I got it. It seems to be very reliable.
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Oct 17, 2009 18:10
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I pay $69/month currently through GEICO with no violations on my driving record and no accidents in over 5 years. I just got a speeding ticket a couple weeks ago, but I got an attorney who will get the charge reduced to a no-points violation so that insurance doesn't get wind of it. That said, my 25th birthday is in January and my policy renews in February. Typically, how much can I expect to see my rate go down by? I hear 25 is the magic number for a huge rate decrease...
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Nov 13, 2009 22:24
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| # ¿ Apr 30, 2024 02:31 |
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zamin posted:I'll be the first to admit that most older and cheap cars are complete pieces of poo poo and should be avoided at all costs. Personally, I'd rather pay a little bit for upkeep than be in debt with a car payment. For example, right now I pay 264/month on my vehicle. 264 x 12 = 3,168 every year. So paying $1,500 to fix a couple things, and not having a car payment and the debt with it, would be worth it to me. I know that when I pay off my car, I'm probably going to keep it going with normal maintenance and repairs until it's about to die and then I'm only going to buy what I can pay cash for at that point. That's just me though. I have a relatively small amount of debt compared to a lot of people between my credit card and auto loan, but I still hate it nonetheless and can't wait to be rid of it all.
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Nov 15, 2009 17:27
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