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Before I read any of the responses, my first thought was also to get rid of the car payments.
About 3 years ago I bought a 93 Nissan pickup. Runs great. Super cheap to register and insure. The vehicle I had before that was a 92 Corolla I owned for around 6 years. Before that, an 87 Camry I also bought used and ran for about 5 or 6 years. Paid from $1,000 to $2,000 for each one. Only one of them ever stranded me because of a thermostat. I called AAA and got a tow to my mechanic. The others barely ever needed anything.
Keeping the cars is not financially sound. You need to get rid of car payments. Get a reliable old Japanese vehicle and AAA in case it ever breaks down, which is unlikely.
Doesn't sound like you're willing to, though. So, I hope they're worth it to you. They are taking all of the money that could be a vacation, an emergency fund, etc.
And you mentioned schools - do you have kids? Kids are also very expensive.
Get a nice, cheap old dependable Toyota and have some money each month to do something more fun than look out the window at your cars that take up all of your disposable income.
Honestly, your interest rate is so high on that personal loan that I would suggest trying to get a no interest credit card with 12 to 15 months. Start charging all of your bills and daily expenses to that. This will help you build a cash reserve to pay off the 6,700 in addition to the other 5000 you will be getting. In this way, you won’t gave to pay to transfer your balance or pay interest.
You effectively gave yourself an interest free loan then to pay down the credit card balance in 15 months.
Congratulations on your move to the beach (Did you go from renting to owning or from owning to owning? ...assuming the latter includes property taxes and home insurance in your mortgage payment).
Your increased monthly house payment ($385 ($1100 from $715)) has increased your monthly fixed budget items from $2495 to $2880, leaving you $580 per month for food, entertainment, clothing and other expenses (versus $965 before). How did you plan to make-up this deficit when you signed the home mortgage? (Did you intend to cut this out of food and entertainment expenses?)
Generally speaking, your budget doesn't look disproportionately excessive (perhaps a $100 here or there). However, it doesn't appear you have much room to flex for unexpected home and other expenses. Your plan to cut insurance (?) and payoff the personal loan makes sense, but, will increase your monthly expenses. You also need to think about an emergency fund ... perhaps this is coming from your part-time work/savings.
For now, you are simply going to have to juggle and squeeze to get your living expenses back into line with your income. Once you do that, a good plan would be to set-aside any raises/bonuses (as though you didn't receive them), rather than considering them spendable income. That will help you build your reserves and live within your means -- since unexpected expenses are bound to happen.
You say you are upside down on both vehicles. By how much? If the value is 15,000 but you owe 17,000, it might still be best to sell the car for as close to 15k as possible. If I was really financially strapped, I'd much rather have 2K to pay off than 17K to pay off, even without the car.
You say you are upside down on both vehicles. By how much? If the value is 15,000 but you owe 17,000, it might still be best to sell the car for as close to 15k as possible. If I was really financially strapped, I'd much rather have 2K to pay off than 17K to pay off, even without the car.
On the Honda only about $2000, on the Mustang like $8000-I guess were just gonna eat those expenses. I really want to focus on that 17% personal loan right now.
The interest rate on the Honda is 1.7% and on the Mustang is 5%. After we close on our house next month, I was thinking of trying to get the Mustang refinanced. How long should we wait after closing on the house to do that?
I'm with you on paying off the high interest personal loan. The interest you pay per month, is likely more than the interest you pay for both, of your cars combined.
Some people will say buy an old junker outright. If thats not quite your flavor you can very easily find a nice used car for $14,000 and do a 6 year loan at 4% with payments of like $250 a month. (Bank of America)
You could easily drop $600 a month if you got sensible about the car payments. And then you could put that into a Roth IRA
Good God 17 % whoa that right there says a lot . yep get rid of your car and maybe get a halfway decent used car if you can and be done with that . at least with a used car it will be paid for and you cut your car payment in half right ?
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