azurecrayon said:the car is running. theres a knock in the engine that could possibly be serious and expensive to fix. the warranty that they said the car had and that was posted on the big warranty window sticker that cars have, was non-existent. according to them it had a 50k mile warranty and we bought it at 27k. we found out 3 days later (after driving it and finding numerous serious issues that made it unsafe to drive at night) the warranty was already expired and it was out of warranty. we contacted them about it, they eventually agreed to take the car back, but after we drove the 80 miles to the dealership, they refused again. capital one refused to revoke the loan despite numerous calls and details about the false warranty information and issues with the car. attorney generals office advised us to seek legal council. we couldnt afford a lawyer and couldnt find one willing to work pro bono for this type of thing.

lesson learned. pay cash.

Your answer to a car problem/bad loan is another car/bad loan and then another car/bad loan. You have to find SOME WAY to break this debt cycle.

You have too many excuses and not enough solutions. You use debt to get out of your problems. You have to change INTERNALLY. You have to DO something to make a change. Learn to work on cars and get a $500 to $1,000 car to run for 3 years. Please don't tell me this can't be done as I have a friend who makes a killing getting junkers going and selling them for under $2K. Or never turn the heat over 55 during the winter. There are some real cheapskates who laugh at people with $400-$900 winter heating bills and have done this all of their lives. They would feel strange in a home with the heat set at 68-75 during the winter.

I can't tell you what it is but something has to change.

mhudson said:So was this a 7 year loan? It seems based on your payments the rate is a lot higher than what you are saying.

and yes, it was i believe an 84 month loan. 2 years down, 5 to go. thats lumped in there with the "we were stupid" part.

Leave it in the ghetto with the keys in the ignition

Have you looked into buying a Crown Vic?

azurecrayon said:i actually considered that =P
Moral issues aside, insurers have seen a huge spike in suspicious thefts and fires, and are aggressively investigating these cases. If you "accidentally" left it running in a bad neighborhood (remember, insurers know where the theft hot spots are) while you went into a convenience store, the insurer will see right through that, and you might find yourself in a hellish situation in which you have an outstanding loan to Cap1, no claim, and no car.

OP from your followup posts you seem convinced you are going to let it go... theres nothing FW can do for you to minimize the hit you are going to take for this.

Just a thought -- if homeownership and self-sufficiency are your goals, you can sign up with MSHDA:

http://www.michigan.gov/mshda

You graduate from their training program where they teach topics like budgeting and credit repair. These programs usually have "Individual Development Accounts" where you save $1000 and they match three or four times that amount to help with down payment towards a house or creating gainful self-employment (pending approval of your business plan).

With your present income levels, you'd definitely qualify for many programs that might help you get on track.

SpecialJohnny said:Just a thought -- if homeownership and self-sufficiency are your goals, you can sign up with MSHDA:

http://www.michigan.gov/mshda

You graduate from their training program where they teach topics like budgeting and credit repair. These programs usually have "Individual Development Accounts" where you save $1000 and they match three or four times that amount to help with down payment towards a house or creating gainful self-employment (pending approval of your business plan).

With your present income levels, you'd definitely qualify for many programs that might help you get on track.

thank you very much for that info! i am familiar with mshda, through my job ive worked with them previously a few times when we managed another complex that accepted section 8 tenants. ive even looked into their homebuyer assistance programs including a new program that just started this week. but i had never heard of the IDA program before.

im trying to find more information now, some information says it was a 5 yr program that started in 2000. so im not sure its an active program still, but i have an email address to try and get more info from. it is definitely worth looking into.

thank you again!

fatslob said:Have you looked into buying a Crown Vic?Best advice in the whole thread.

Just to brag a little to anyone who might care: I sold my fancy cadillac limo last week for $4500. I bought it for $5500 exactly two years to the day before selling it. I put about $200 in parts into it. I replaced the tranny with one out of a donor car and parted off the easy stuff so it cost about 40 hours of work, but no money. It made 3 2200 mile trips to vegas and 2 2100 mile trips east. We cruised around like bigshots locally countless times and I borrowed it out a couple of times. In all, we put 14k miles on it. So you see, I can waste money on cars too.

I did immediately find a 2000 excursion with 75k miles for $3800. The body and interior are perfect, but I have to hunt down a miss or two in the engine. I think I'll be replacing a couple of the V10's injectors. The COPs seem good. You see, I highly recommend crown vics when you are looking for the lowest TCO, but when you want giant highway cruisers that can pull 12k pounds, you sometimes have to buy them broken to make them affordable. If I can't fix it myself, I'll sell it broken for $4500 and and make a few bucks. In all likelyhood, this rig will probably last me 80-100k miles. Then I'll probably sell it for around $4k in today's dollars. Since they stopped making excursions in 2005, it might even appreciate a fair amount.

That's why I don't go take 24% loans to buy junk cars that are virtually disposable to me. I think the cost of warranty and depreciation for newer cars is far greater than the cost of maintaining something that was built to last 300k miles.

And that, my friends, is why I beat a retired police cruiser around town (besides the fact that almost everyone always yields to me ).

azurecrayon said: in two years we should be able to have 15-20k saved for downpayment.

If you can save that amount of money why not just put all of those $$ twords the loan on your current car?