So a little over 2 years ago I bought a 2016 Ford Fiesta and while it's been pretty decent I have a multitude of factors pushing me to get rid of it. I've always done just fine with <$5k shitboxes as i was an auto tech for about 15 years. I drove some really nice older cars and never had a problem maintaining them myself. Never a single breakdown or catastrophic issue and I lost very little money when i got bored and decided to try something else. For some reason I got the idea that I should try buying a brand new car like a normal person and see what that life is like.
My issues are that the car is too small, I'm tired of driving a manual transmission in NYC traffic every day, and my car just spent nearly 5 days at the dealership to fix something I could have fixed in my driveway in about 20 minutes. The few times I've needed warranty service on this thing have been an absolute frustrating nightmare, and I've been to about 3 different dealers and they're all useless. WTF did I pay all this money for? I'd also like to save that couple hundred a month in car payments and put it to something more useful (like saving it).
So my idea is to get rid of it and go back to what I used to do. I'm thinking of an older Ford Fusion, Toyota Camry, Honda Accord, etc.. Something comfortable and cheap to maintain. The good side is that I'm not upside down. I owe about $5k on this car and trade in value is about $7500. Should I trade it into a used car dealer or am I going to get hosed because they're not really benefitting from the transaction as far as I can see. I'd rather buy private party since it's often thousands less for the same car, but that would require me laying out the cost of the new-used car and then figuring out how to sell mine. I'd have to pay off the loan to get the title and then hope I get what I want for it. I seriously doubt a private buyer is going to have the patience to wait until i get the title from the bank and clear it with the DMV. I also fear it might take a long time to sell private party since it's a manual transmission. I'd have to kill my savings to pay for both until my Fiesta is sold. Or I could get a second loan to buy the new car and then pay it off once my Fiesta is sold. I really don't want to tie up that much of my savings in cars while this is all figured out and at the end of the day I'm not even sure i'll get much more than trade-in value if I sell private party anyway. What would be the best course of action in my situation?
Submitted April 20, 2019 at 09:18AM by anarchyx34 http://bit.ly/2DmGAA4
