Stupid Tax: The Jeep Loan
First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a lot of stupid financial decisions. At least that's what happened in our situation. If you haven't read the rest of this series, check out where our stupid tax was first paid and then how we rushed into buying our house.
The Jeep
We have a Jeep named Trish. She's been pretty good to us, but it wasn't always that way. We (or at least I) resented Trish coming into our lives for about three years. Why? I'm so glad you asked...
B.D. (Before Dave) we thought we needed to buy a newer vehicle. We had already established a habitual spending habit and hadn't worked out any of our saving muscles since we bought our house. Our saving muscles were all flabby and starting to become atrophied.
Naturally feeding our addiction of spending, a newer vehicle was just the thing we "needed." Kels has always wanted a Jeep, so we looked at Jeeps. This would be the car she drove anyway, so she should get what she wants, right? We found Trish online and went to go look at her. During the test drive, with the salesman in the car, Kelsey states, "This is my dream car!!" Not the best way to keep any sort of negotiating power. Lesson learned as it was our first auto purchase together.
We wanted the Jeep real bad. So, sitting in the dealership, in the salesman's office, Kelsey called her dad and asked for a loan. This is one of Dave's big no no's. Never borrow money from family. Thanksgiving dinner doesn't taste the same when you owe someone at the table money, he says. We had enough wiggle room in our budget to pay him $300 a month. This, of course, was still while we had no savings plan. Terrible idea.
The deal was done and a few days later, we had ourselves a newer vehicle. Happily ever after, right? Not so much.
We barely scraped by for the next year, and, looking back, it started a downward spiral of money fights and arguments that were tearing our marriage apart. Finally, later that year, we decided to attend Financial Peace University in hopes of turning it all around. And it changed our lives.
We finally paid off Trish in December 2009 as a part of our debt snowball. It felt so good we presented Kelsey's dad with an oversized check to celebrate our freedom. It feels so good to own two cars and have no payments. That extra $300 a month helped tremendously as we dug out of the rest of our student loan debt.
So, I think this is the last post for the stupid tax series. I hope we never have another car loan or have to post about paying a stupid tax again. But, we are glad to be able to share our mistakes with you hoping that you will learn from the mistakes we have already made. The most important thing is that we learn from our mistakes and gain wisdom.
What's your experience with vehicle loans? How do you pay for your vehicles?
Other posts in this series