i need some help. i just started a new job making some decent money. its a very secure job so theres no worry about being layed off. i am currently making payments on my 2002 wrx. come september, i will have 3 years of payments left and they are not cheap each month....+ insurance.
my question to all of you is this...should i sell my car privately, trade it in for a cheap new car (or used), or just finish paying my car off (which i really dont want to)? i would like to have a car thats paid off so i can save money and pay off my school debt. i love my wrx but i cant stand the payments. at this rate, ill have debt until im 90. i just want to do the best thing and im just confused and need some outside opinions. any suggestions are greatly appreciated. thanks.

mike

I'm kinda in the same situation. I love my car but I find that most of the time I spend it in is in traffic every night. Much of its power going to waste.

First fire up excel and load the amortization sheet for all your loans and fill them in. That should give you a rough estimate loan-ending milestones. And see what effect keeping/not keeping the car will have.. Personally if I could find a decent SVX I wouldn't mind taking a couple grand loss..

Once everything is in front of you it will be a much easier decision to make..

good luck..

If you wanna sell your WRX shoot me an email at njrobins@syr.edu NJR is pretty close to me and I am in the market

Don't forget to use a realistic price for how much you can sell your WRX for. Figure $15k or so for a 2-year-old WRX. You've already lost the big chunk of money by buying a new car and taking the big 1st-two-year depreciation hit; after that, it depreciates much more slowly, and it should be quite a reliable car. Unless you go out and buy a 7-8 year old low-end car for $5k, you're not going to end up saving much money in the end. If you're paying more than $1000/year for full insurance, shop around to at least 5 different companies -- I ended up saving almost 30% going from Geico to Amica. Remember, too, that in 3-4 years, you can probably drop the collision coverage and maybe the comp coverage, too, and self-insure once the potential hit is a lot smaller.
Also, what's the interest rate on your loan? You can look into refinancing it to a lower rate at your credit union or one of the online places like www.peoplefirst.com.

$15k is a little low. I would say more like 19k if you have resonable miles on the car. Go on autotrader.com and look to see what other folks are selling rides for.

$19k sounds about right unless you drive more than 1k miles/month.

I'd recommend giving your decision careful thought. I did the same thing back in 1995. I bought a new Saturn right after I got a decent job out of school. The payment scared me after six months so I traded the car in on a cheaper truck. The truck was a lemon and cost me a fortune in just six months, until I traded it in on my 1996 Impreza. You can really get burned financially if you aren't lucky.

Don't forget that used cars break down and generally have no warranty to cover the repairs. A newer car allows you to budget your auto expenses pretty well....just payments and insurance.

I'm kind of in the same situation. I have decided that I love the car enough (it's my only true vice) that I'm going to keep it. Just for the hell of it though, I went in to the dealership to find out what I could get. My 02 sedan w/22K miles bluebooked at about 17,500. Of course there's room to deal on that, but I figure paying the car off in 3 years or so will buy me reliable transportation for the next 5-7.

If you're going to be satisfied with your car for a long time and it will meet your needs, I say take the hit and pay the sucker off. You'll save money in the long term. If you like turning your car over every couple of years, then you should seriously consider leasing.

I would say more like 19k if you have resonable miles on the car. Go on autotrader.com and look to see what other folks are selling rides for.
As you can see from the post, above, depreciation is a bitch! Why would anyone spend $19k on a 2-year-old WRX when they could buy a brand-new one for $22k? autotrader.com only tells you what folks are *asking*, not what they are selling for. For a 2-year-old 5MT w/30k miles on it, $15-16k is about right. (you do get a bonus for being under the 36k warranty cutoff). KBB lists 1-to-2 year-old WRX 5MT wagon w/30k miles as $15,700 tradein value. If the car's an early one (2 years old), it'll be somewhat lower, if the car's a late '02 (1 year old) it'll be a bit higher.