Overall my finance goals were once very simple. I would
-Take care of 02 my Honda Civic
-Put away money with each paycheck and pay off some debts with it.
-Get my Bach’ degree and complete PA school with said Honda.
-Then finance a newish car when I become a PA, as a reward.
It was a beautiful plan, ~~but then the fire nation attacked.~~ I mean a plow truck totaled my car while I was at work. Everything turned out pretty well. With the 4k settlement I can either get another car similar to my 02 Honda or use most of the 4k as a down payment for a newer car.
Here’s some background on my living situation.
I make at least 2200 a month. I often make a couple hundred more, but that’s with OT and the little extra I make for working beyond 6:00 pm and I don’t want to count it in my budget plans. Rent is 800 and my cell phone is 100. Miscellaneous stuff like Hulu and the gym is about another 50. Also, I’m trying to save 600 dollars of my paycheck every month. I recently started doing well, and now I’m working on developing good financial habits. All together my current expenses, including saving money, accounts for roughly 70% of my total expenses. Fair warning, my biggest financial vice is ordering out. 20-30 dollars a meal that last the day is normal for me. It’s definitely something I can do without, however, living around D.C., the DUMB traffic (seriously, I just moved down here, who thought an hour to drive 20 miles was an acceptable time table for commutes.), and overall convenience of having the food brought to me while I work on other projects helped with the development of this vice.
I’m considering the consequences of my two choices and pick out what’s best. I’m hoping the people of Reddit might have some helpful advice or point out an insight I’m overlooking.
My first option is to buy a car outright, gamble on my chances of it not having any major problems. When I had the time, I liked putting in work on my Honda. Everything that needed to be worked on was repaired, or replaced. I did everything I could to take care of it and only had cosmetic fixes left. Unfortunately, it did take a couple thousand dollars to get to this point and I no longer have the time to put into a car like I did with my Honda. If the next car needs a major fix it’ll be a lot more inconvenient and that much more costly. But I’ll have some disposable income and I’ll be able to save money comfortably. I could even get a beater that around 2.5k and have extra money to save and pay of some debt.
My second option is to Finance a car. I’m not looking to do anything outrageous. I’ve done a little research already. I’m looking for a car around 8-12k and willing to put 3-4k down
I looked around and my APR would be around 8-12% ( I already spoke with my bank about financing a car through them, they should get back to me later today.)
I’m high-balling it here, but my car expenses would be around 500 dollars a month. That’s 200 a month for a car payment, 200 a month for insurance, and 100 for gas. If I continue to save 600 dollars every month, that’s 100% of my income accounted for and there’s no disposable income. Admittedly, I rather enjoyed having disposable income for once in my life and being able to pay of some debt I got in my early adult life. The biggest benefit is having a car that *shouldn’t* have any major problems for a couple years. Having that peace of mind is really valuable to me right now. For the past couple months thunderclaps of sh*t have been coming at my life and avoiding my car being another thunderclap sounds very sweet to me.
Right now I’m on the fence between the two because having a disposable income so I can save money comfortably is just as valuable as having a car that won’t have any major issues for a few years and could save me money by having it last me for another 10.
Side note: I spent like 2 hours trying to have proper grammar in this post. I'm horrible at English and I try to improve when I can. So feel free to let me know is there's anything I can fix.
Submitted March 01, 2019 at 10:47AM by nxluda https://ift.tt/2tHJ1I2
