Paid In Full

August was my last car payment.

(The day I bought my car)

 



I paid my car off 15 months early. It wasn't always easy but I did it. It's not like that was the only bill I had due each month. I've got a mortgage, credit card bills, utilities, etc. So a lot of people want to know, How did I pay it off early?

Small extra payments.

When I first got my car, I would pay as much as I could afford to spare. I would send in 50.00-100.00 extra each month towards the principle. In the beginning of a car loan the interest is at it's highest. There was some months that I could only afford to send 20.00 extra dollars a month but at least that was something. As time went on, the interest started to get lower because of the economic times, etc and the fact that I was paying down the principle. I would call the bank that carried my loan about every 6 months and ask for what the final payout amount would be. That would give me an idea of how much I still owed.

This past year I really started to see the progress and knew exactly how much I needed to send in as extra to pay it off before the end of the year. I wanted to try to pay it off earlier so I did the math and kept sending in an extra payment every pay day. That's how I was able to pay it off so early. If you have a car payment and you're trying to get it paid off before the pay off cards don't get discouraged. Even if you send in 5.00-10.00 dollars extra a month at least that's something. It helps in the end and it does save you money. Plus it gets you to that goal of being debt free from a car loan and frees up your money monthly that was going to your payment. So my advice is DO NOT get discouraged. I use to feel like I'd never get it paid off but I kept sending the money in.

Be warned.... my loan agency did it and I'm sure yours will too... once they realize that you keep sending in extra towards the principle and that you're going to  have your car paid off early, they will start to send you letters in the mail offering you to skip a months payment. They love to do this around the holidays and the start of summer. Don't go for it! They want to be able to charge you an entire extra month of interest. Keep making the payments and extra. Trust me!

The Vanity Plate

Yesterday, as I was sitting in stopped traffic on the interstate I came to the realization that vanity plates are a waste of money. I sat behind "PTMama" for 45 mins and I kept thinking to myself. This person has to pay an extra 50.00 $ a year to keep that plate. In WV you're also required to pay your taxes and sticker fee each year as well in addition to that 50.00 bucks! So PTMama and many others who have vanity plates are saying, "Yes, state of ______ (insert state name there), please let me give you more of my hard earned money so I can let the world know I want to be called ______ or known as _____ while being in my car. 

To me...it's just not worth the money. Do you have vanity plates? What's your take on it?

The Good. The Bad & The Ugly

I'm going to throw myself right into this...be prepared..sit down.

The Good: I got my car today. I spent 4 hours sitting there waiting on everything to get settled. Turns out we had a bump in the road and I ended up with a Kia Spectra. Something happened with the Rio and I could get a better price (yes a better price) with the Spectra. Here's my new baby. I think I shall call it: The bay-bee

(Obviously the front side view)

(The center console...and yes that's a gumby keychain)

(I'm trying to hold in my excitement!)

Now onto....The bad: I had to be at work this morning at 4:30am. Yes, you read that right. Four thirty in the morning, which means I got up at 3:30am. Too bad I couldn't fall asleep till almost 1am. However, I do love my job so once I got there, the day flew by! Sad news though, I have to work Saturday and will only get Sunday off this week.

The Ugly: I've been putting off posting about this for awhile now. I was hoping for the best but now it just looks like it's not going to work out. I'll have to fill all of you in tomorrow when I'm completely awake!

I bought a new car!!!!

That's right!!! The rain let up for a few hours and I was able to roam the car lot and test drive. Within an hour I had picked out what I wanted. I was so excited! I just couldn't act too excited because I needed them to bring down the price. They started out wanting 17,000 dollars. It's really nice and has a ton of extras on it. However, I knew I didn't want to pay that much for it.

 

Finally after some wheeling (haha) and dealing we got them down to 12,900!! It was near the end of the business day so tomorrow morning their writing up the final paper work and I sign at 2:30 once I get off work. I'm SOOO excited!!! 

This is my car...except it's black. Don't worry, I'll take a ton of pictures tomorrow with me in it!!!!

It's a 2009 Kia Rio Lx. It only has 8 miles on it and I put 2 of them on it. It's got all the cute features: keyless remote entry, sat radio, power locks, windows and mirrors. Cruise control, cd player, mp3 hook up. I'm pretty excited!