Last September my girlfriend bought a 2008 Nissan Sentra from a shady used car lot in Latonia, KY (Time Auto Sales, avoid this place like the plague). They absolutely took advantage of her lack of information about cars/financing at the time and hosed her on a car loan. I wish I would have known her at the time and I would have strongly advised her against doing business with these shady used car lots, let alone purchasing this car. The car was in decent condition but had 100,000 miles on it, they sold the car her for $10,148 (which is more than TWICE what the car is worth) and financed it at an APR of 19.5%, bringing the total to $12,821 with interest. She is to make 128 payments of $100 until February of 2020, this equates to nearly $400 a month which is nearly a 1/3 of her income. To state the obvious, she cannot afford this. I make decent money and I would struggle to afford this. I don't know anyone whose monthly payment is this outrageous for a car, and if it is they are driving a high-end luxury car. She has been paying on the car for nearly a year now and still owes around $7.5k.
We have looked into refinancing the car with Navy Federal (she is active Army Reserves), but they will not give her a loan because her payoff amount is more than what the car is worth (they valued the car at about $4k in its current condition). The car has about 136k miles on it and is starting to rack up some maintenance costs. The muffler is rusting out (this was something that was not disclosed to her at the time of purchase) and she is going to need her front breaks done soon. I am afraid she is going to be stuck in an awful situation where her car isn't going to last much longer and she is going to be on the hook for the payoff amount of her loan with no car to show for.
Besides refinancing, does she have any other options? I know there are some crafty and savvy redditors our there, I would love for your advice/take on this situation. Thanks in advance!
Submitted August 09, 2018 at 08:59AM by dank_certified https://ift.tt/2M9gsOJ
