Looking for serious advice.. Should I sell my Truck? Struggling.....

Here's my advice.

You bought the truck, so selling it quickly would be a mistake since the biggest money you lost that you won't get back is taxes you paid on it.
Stop paying over the monthly payment.

You are saying you might be cashflow thin, but you are paying extra cash on what is likely a relatively low APR% loan.

Pay minimum payments for they years you are going to keep it knowing you are going to keep it. When it's paid off, you'll have a vehicle worth $15-20k that was taken care of by a very trust-worthy owner who you trust. (Yourself).


Keep saving the money so you have the flexibility to do what you need or want to do with it.
Depending on your student loan payment and rate, you might be better paying that off so you are down to one loan (your truck).
The tax advantages on student debt of $6,000 balance is negligible at this point. If you can pay that one off, you'll loose up some monthly cash flow.

 

This fella gets it.

 

If you truly believe the market will crash, structure your 401K accordingly but don't even think about not taking advantage of employer match.

3 kids in a Tacoma is going to be really tight. Does your wife have a minivan?

 

Sounds like paying off your student loan should be your priority right now. Get rid of it. Keep the truck. Trade it in in a few years if need be because of your growing family. You’ll possibly regret it later if you sell it now.

 

Why haven't you sold your truck yet ?

 

TLDR all of the comments. This has probably already been said.

You can sell and buy something cheaper with 50-75k on the clock. It’ll be less safe and more prone to problems. Then in 5 years, you’ll be spending more money buying another car.

Assuming you took advantage of the low interest rate, it’s like getting free money. Don’t refi. Don’t mess with it. Pay the minimum and put the rest to other investments that will get you more than 1-2% you’re paying on it now.

You are right. $100k isn’t that much. Which is more reason not to mess with your current contributions and even add more to it. What was daunting to me when I was in my 20’s is the realization that if I wanted to have a retirement income of $75k/yr for 20yrs, I needed to have about $3M (npv) saved by the time I retired. I think people underestimate how much they’ll need. So keep saving/investing. Good luck.

 

Not buying a used car because its out of warranty is one of the silliest things people do to justify buying something they can't afford. I think he's saying likelyhood is low because it is. If you are halfway discerning about the used car you purchase, the probability that you drop $2k on a transmission followed by a head gasket is incredibly low. Seriously, how many people do you even know that had this happen to (on a reasonable used car; not an exotic italian sports car)?

A 6-8 year old honda with 72-94K miles is going to be incredibly reliable.

 

Murphy's law has a funny way of popping up at the worst time....

 

Tough to give advise on this, because clearly people's level of comfort of debt is different... The one thing I will say, is that I wouldn't stop investing to get rid of debt now. Often the return on investment is much higher than the cost of financing, especially if we're talking about less than 50k in debt. Once you get into things like paying off a 150k mortgage quicker, the cost of financing is outrageously high compared to the return on investment of actual investments, and in that case paying it off earlier often is better.

 

Another factor- how many years/ miles do you keep your vehicles?

If you sell/ trade every 5 years, then maybe it doesn't matter as much. If you plan on keeping it 10 years +, then shelling out the money to buy new is probably a better descision financially.

Since OP already bought the truck, paying it off and keeping it forever will probably make the most sense, assuming he actually likes the truck and it serves his needs for a vehicle.

To all the minivan haters, I will admit to being in that "club", until the third child was born- after that, it was time to get what was the most "practical" vehicle- my wife's current ride- minivan.

 

Last call. Pay off your student debt, raise your credit report score a tad. Then, concentrate to pay off the truck while you’re taking advantage of everything you asked for in the baby shower that will give you some time to help pay off the truck. Gain equity for your next purchase. Keep everything else the same. Good luck.

 

I would think 100k at 35 is pretty good, you'll probably work till your 70 anyways. I would at least invest the bare minimum to get the maximum company match. What's the maximum you can invest pretax like 17k a year. I believe financial experts say that is not enough anyways.

I'm trying to do some rough math. 35k for the truck you're probably out the door around 40k, could probably sell the truck for 31k, you owe 26k, so you would walk away with ~5k and be saving $660 a month, yet lost 8k in the process. Also, you would still have to buy something to replace it.

I would start paying the base monthly payment and maybe look into a Credit Union refi, the rates are low, but you would restart your 5 years, but you could get your payment down to help ease the burden and then pay more when you can.

26k at 1.9% for 60m = $455
26k at 1.9% for 72m = $382
26k at 1.9% for 84m = $331

EDIT: A 84 month loan at 1.9% will only cost $1,700 over the life of the loan with no early payoff penalty.

 

Always wondered, how much is enough for those folks ya know?

 

It doesn't take much in savings for a 20 year/old to get to 3 million at $65M.

My grandma has close to $5 million in cash and investments at 96. She worked at an almond factory for most of her life as a line worker. She didn't make more than $30K year. She is the most penny-pinching miser that I personally know. Further, she has almost 30% of her assets in CDs/MMFs and still got to $5 million.

Of course because of her personality, she will not give money to me, my cousins or my parents.

My uncle took a page from her book and he is also in the millionaire club at 50.

Building wealth is really just about time and savings rate. At least that is what I have taken from the examples in my life.


I would like to thank everyone for the advice.

I talked to my wife and here is what we decided.

She still has a car note of $10K remaining ($550 a month). We are going to pay of here loan and my student loan which will free up about 700 a month, with the bonus and cash in savings. We will use that increased cash flow to pay off my car loan. Then we will accelerate our savings to 20% -25% per year.

 

How much is enough? My wife retired at 59 1/2 last July. If we took her investments out and comverted it to cash, stuck it in a mattress and divided it out monthly for the next 40 years til she is 100, she will make $400 a month more than she was making her last paycheck before she retired. She was making really good money too.
We have been married 34 years out of her 38 year career. We didn't get that by robbing her 401K or not contributing enough for max match. We hung in there and skimped for awhile.

Not saying when we were younger we didn't think about it tho lol. Especially with two kids and her working on her Masters and me traveling the world for my job. Point is, we didn't.

Dude, everyone is different and everyone will handle it differently. There are also 1000 different ways, and most of them will work.

As far as the market crashing? Good luck with that. I know this: We stuck in there through the last three crashes. Didn't change our strategy. We came out ahead every time versus the people who panicked and pulled or moved their allocations. Now that we are older, we have moved our investments heavily towards blue chip and cash. Still left some in the indexed side though.
Point is, at 35 you will recover. Hell, you will recover if you were 45. Now at 55 and above? Pay attention lol. Good luck.

 

Maybe my bro mathematics is off here, but I don't see the rush to pay off a low interest debt. I would rather invest the 26k if I had it on hand.The return would be greater than the interest fee of the low interest debt over the life cycle of the loan.

I guess it depends on what your personal risk factor is. Crypto is paying big for many around me right now.

 

I'm not seeing it either. A decent rate of let's say even 3% on 26k means the cost to finance is so low that you'd still be better off investing than paying it off early.

 

Ditto for me. Don’t care that all of our neighbors and friends drive Yukon XL’s. Everyday schlepping kids around and long road trips, minivan is king.

 

Right. It’s almost free money. At 1-2% rate, you’d be tripling that on your returns even with some very conservative products. Doesn’t make sense to me, either.