Recently got a supervisor promotion at work. This essentially doubled my pay to around $42k a year (from $10/hr full time previously). My old car was broken down and needed a replacement, and being excited by the new dollar signs on my paycheck I signed a lease for a brand new Mazda3 which is running me $414 a month (the payment is high because it's a new generation 2019 model and I rolled around $1000 of negative equity from my previous vehicle). This was the worst mistake of my life. A few months in, it turns out the job is a total burnout job and I am definitely not cut out for it. I later found out the position I'm in (kitchen manager at a grocery store chain) has a literal 90% turnover rate within my company and even the management trainers warned me against it, so maybe it's not just me. Either way, I'm not going to last much longer and even if I'm just demoted back to my former position there is no way in hell I can afford these payments.
I still have a few semesters left of college so it will be very difficult for me to find a similar paying job until I graduate, with no marketable skills I'm probably stuck in the $10-15 range at best.
What can I do to get out of this car? The current lease payoff value is $29000. Nobody will want to do a lease swap because the payment is so high. I can't even get an appraisal online of the trade in value because the car is so new. At this point I'm honestly considering doing a voluntary repo even if it trashes my credit and just using my emergency fund to buy a cheap beater car until I graduate and can find a decent job.
Submitted May 12, 2019 at 09:45AM by joey_fatass http://bit.ly/2WBWqhC
