How in debt are you with your Tacoma?

I financed my vehicle. Hope you're all offended.

 

I finally installed my icon remote res 2.0's tonight after letting them sit in the garage until I found time. paid cash for them

 

where do we stand on opening checking accounts to get the $2-300 reward and then closing said account

 

debt past my trembling earballs

 

A little less than 4K on my '12. I could pay it off but I choose not to . I also do not have a house payment , its paid for . The bad thing is Im paying car insurance on five vehicles which is essentially a house payment.

 

Both of my trucks were paid in full at time of purchase. and all the mods were paid in full. I use credit cards, but pay them off almost immediately. My only debt is my mortgage, and that's less then 50% of the home value. We are trying to buy another home right now and just got my credit report. 811

 

Originally Financed for 31k. Down to 17.8.

 

I would never pay cash for a vehicle. Drop 30k in cash would be a huge mistake IMO. You never know when you might need that security blanket. Always have a good amount of cash JIC, but get the longest loan you can. Lowest payment. Build your credit. Also I don't necessarily look at a vehicle as a depreciating asset. That's only scratching the surface of the conversation. A car gets you to work which finances your entire life. It also gets you or a loved one to the hospital. And on and on this conversation could go. Just my 2 cents. Don't go out and buy a Lexus at 18 but a truck is a utilitarian vehicle that does many things.

 

Yes, huge mistake if you only have 30k. But if you still have plenty of cash in reserve, why pay interest? You also may get a better deal on the vehicle if you can pay in cash.

 

I owe $1500 on the truck. All mods were paid for when they were done with 0 to any card. Never been one to finance a mod.

 

Owe 10k on the note​

All mods paid for in cold hard coin

 

I owe less than 10k, and want to upgrade everything on the truck BADLY. With my CC I could easily pay for all the parts and labor on the few things I couldn't do myself. That being said, I told myself I wasn't going to spend money on major upgrades until the truck is completely paid off.

So many nights have I spent looking at the things I want to put on her and remembered that not being in debt and paying more than something is worth through interest is better than having an upgraded truck. Hard for me to deal with, but it's the truth.

I agree a responsible conversation does need to be had in this country regarding credit and how it's utilized way more than it should be (in my opinion). I consider myself fortunate that I don't have student loan debt and just because I don't have it doesn't mean I want debt in another form.

Edit: when the time comes though, I will certainly be using a CC to pay for the parts and small amounts of labor due to cash back rewards. Pay it off immediately and boom, the total cost of everything got a few percentage cheaper

 

Someone in that situation likely falls outside the scope of the discussion to begin with.

 

the longer the loan, the higher the rate. i'd advise you to down grade to a cheaper ride

 

I fall into this situation and very much a part of this discussion.

I'll assume this is at least partially directed at me. It has nothing to do with bragging and everything to do with being responsible. I believe home ownership is kind of an exception as it is generally an appreciating asset and provides a greater life value than any other assets that generally depreciate (as shelter is a generally accepted requirement for life, obviously that's debatable by some extremists and subjective to rental rates, regions, and life situations.)

I have made plenty of mistakes myself financing things over the years like phones, cars, tires, you name it and what I have learned from that is that there is no complicated math to this. If you properly adjust for risk in every situation (which so few people do) I do not see how there is substantial upside to financing OTHER than, "because I want this now." Nobody is even remotely close to perfect with this, but as @Thurman Merman stated above it is a fundamental issue within The United States and many parts of the world because we do a piss poor job of educating our youth in financial control and decision making. People can blurt out all of the math behind their deals they have done, the great interest rates, the back alley crack deals for moving money strategically, and wild investments like, "I am so smart I bought bitcoin." ... At the end of the day debt is unfortunately somewhat required for many people (including myself, a bit left on my house.) A vehicle, or two, and a truck especially is generally a luxury item (in the way that its not ultimately required) and to have someone take a loan to buy something, especially to mod it there after while still owing money sounds childish and entitled to me. Sorry if that offends you. You didn't need a spendy truck, you wanted one. You wanted something you technically cannot afford in total (but could afford monthly) and now have to pay someone to borrow their money to buy this thing you want. I don't see how anyone can justify this beyond, "I just wanted it." If that's the other side of this argument sure, ok, but don't try to justify it as a wise decision. BTW since someone commented about generational things I am 31, not 80. I do not think this is unreasonable.

 

LOL, every generation blames the one(s) before it. I guess at 46 I'm Gen X and I blame the entitlements given to the Boomers for my woes.

 

You didn't offend me, read my posts. Affirmative one liners are the problem here because they don't lead to any learning, just aggressive counterpoints. I get it, you have had a bad experience with debt when you were young. Most of us have similar stories, I had to borrow money when I was younger to cover debts I had coming out of a divorce. It wasn't pretty. Moving on, what I think you are trying to do is caution people against making the same mistakes you did. That's fair enough. However, when people act like there is never any reason to be in debt over a truck, you're skipping well past the personal debt load issue and moving on to a moral judgement on someones finances. I mean you're free to your opinions but again rubbing yours abrasively against another persons opinion really isn't in line with the Tacomaworld COC. If you had simply wrote out what you did now initially, you could of made a point other than lumping people into one box or another. Conversation over confrontation.

 

Well, then my question would be, "Why are you buying a $30k vehicle?" If you've got the cash, but don't want to use it just in case, why wouldn't you just buy a vehicle for whatever percentage of that cash you ARE willing to spend? Sounds like you don't need a 30k truck, you just want one. Buy a 15k truck and have 15k leftover for that emergency.

Or better yet, have separate funds for things like an emergency or a vehicle. I have 3 online, long-term savings accounts - an emergency fund, a vehicle fund, and a house savings fund. Calculate how much money you need to survive 6 months without work and put that into your emergency fund. The rest you can spend on a vehicle if you really need one. Otherwise, it's just a "want" that you probably shouldn't be buying on credit.

Again, that's just my opinion, but you'd be hard-pressed to convince me that it isn't the most financially sound plan.

 

So true. I think the problem is that this generation coming up, I'm talking about graduating post 2000, will likely have the worst living standards since the turn of the century. Diseases that we killed off are coming back and people don't care to get vaccinated, the climate is off and it doesn't matter whose to blame, globalization and over education have basically made high unemployment a reality in the next century, and the GINI gap between rich and poor is growing exponentially. I'm sure I missed something in there, but if you're coming from nothing right now financially this century could be a raw deal.

 

There's the rub. I don't think any of this should be about convincing someone to change. If someone is convinced of change over an internet forum I would hate to see what the rest of their life is like.