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Selling The Car

"If you do the things you need to do when you need to do them, then someday you can do the things you want to do when you want to do them." ~Zig Ziglar

Today's going to be a quick post because I babysit a little toddler on Thursdays and won't have much time to think big enough thoughts to write...

But yes, we're going to put the Honda CRV up for sale. It's been a painful decision, but when it's in black and white after I wrote it on this blog a couple of days ago, it's just so obvious. We want to be out of debt in a year, and the car is over half of our debt load. No brainer. Dave Ramsey says "SELL THE CAR!", especially if you can't pay it off within 18 months.

Luckily the car is worth more than we owe so we should come out of it with some cash. We've got one dependable car right now but we'll move to two cheap, paid-for-with-cash cars. Yesterday as I was mulling over getting a "junker", I was walking across a busy street and right in the intersection a car died. My stomach flipped a little. Ugh. I really don't want to face undependable cars, but that will just be motivation for us to save our money faster so we can get a dependable car again. And who knows, people tell us cheap cars run great these days. And do you notice there is almost no rust even on old cars anymore? We won't be driving an old rust bucket at least.

Y'all are gonna get sick of "Dave Ramsey says". Even he jokes about it in his videos. I guess the nerds of the marriage, like me, tend to sound like a broken record sometimes. Gee, really?

(And by the way, by selling our car not only do we get rid of $11,000 in debt, we will no longer have a $290 car payment. However, we'll put at least $100-200 in the bank each month in a sinking fund for car repairs and an eventual "better car" purchase. That's the way to do this.)

Comments

Becky said…
That's one I just can NOT do: I have too many psychic scars from the legacy of family vacations ruined when our adorable but crappy VW van would throw engine rods--three times!!--leaving us stranded by the side of the road, or sleeping in the car, while my mother chained smoked and had $$$$ meltdowns, since we were the proverbial poor church mice. Then, history repeated itself in a used Toyota, stranding Bill and I--poor students--in Louisville Ky, on our way to our wedding, on the Outer Banks. My father had to drive all night to get us and then we drove through the night all the way to the wedding, too!

Cars that aren't under warranty for a long time leave me feeling vulnerable and anxious...I'm sure if my mother had a better attitude when I was a child, I would today, too.
Lisa Zahn said…
I have a pretty bad attitude about those things too...one thing in our favor though is that we're not going anywhere this year, as all money will go toward paying that 2nd mortgage off. And we'll save in the meantime for a better car again so by the time we have to drive further than a couple hours away we should be better off. But it's true that we depend on our cars SO much in this society we need reliable ones, and to not have that is scary. We'll be keeping the cell phones and AAA card very handy!

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