Does Everyone Have A Car Payment?
Everyone has to have a car payment, right? Society pushes us to believe we do. Just how ingrained is this? We’d like to share a story.
Time to Retire Ole Red
It was time, in fact it was past time, to get rid of our well worn, rust ridden, jankity old minivan. Ron and I had been talking on and off about a new to us vehicle (used) for at least 9 months. Ron checked a couple of places online to see if they had what we were looking for. We moved our money from our sinking fund (car fund) into checking and we were on our way.
We started at the dealership where we’ve bought more than 8 cars for cash. We met up with Travis, our favorite salesperson. Knowing what we had saved in the account for this purchase we looked at 2 of the 3 vehicles they had.
We chose a beautiful, non-jankity, no rust, 2016 with only 49,000 miles. I can’t even tell you how excited I was since this is the newest vehicle we have purchased in a while as we were funding other dreams that were more important.
Then came the negotiations. Here is where we noticed society’s strong pull.
The Fateful Question
“Where would you like your payment to be?” asked Travis. When we didn’t immediately respond he caught himself and said, “Oh that’s right, you always pay cash. What is your out the door price?”
It Doesn't Have To Be This Way
See how society traps us? Watch ads on TV, for the low low monthly payment of, fill in the blank. Instead of asking “Can I afford the payments?” we teach our clients to ask “Can I buy it now or do I need to save more?” as well as “Is this my first priority?”
Another advantage of paying cash and knowing what you want; we drove our new to us minivan off the lot in 1 hour. That time included looking at the vehicles and the test drive. Not having to fill out a ton of paperwork for a loan certainly simplified our process.
“New” car in the driveway and our next “car payment” will go right into OUR account instead of OUT to someone else.
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