I want a new layout. I'm trying to decide if I have the time/energy to make my own, or if I should just look for one that I like. Trouble is though, more often than not, I can't find what I like anywhere. I'm so damn picky.
Yesterday my husband came to me and said that he called to check the balance on our car loan. If our estimate is correct, we could pay off our car loan with our tax return. We still have the need to buy a van, but if we pay off the car loan a) save a butt load in interest (our interest rate for the car is 19% - can you say, bankruptcy? I'll give the backstory on that here in a few) b) save the money from the car payment, plus some extra as a down payment for a newer van. Or lease one. Here's where we're having trouble deciding what to do. See, because of his bad credit history (namely, the bankruptcy. Everything since has been good.) we get stuck with high interest rates. Which is understandable, but frustrating at times. We've done the math, we could lease a 2005 Honda Odyssey LX for 500/month. Or we could buy a 2001-2002 other brand minivan and pay like 450/month (corrected this. High interest.) (and this would have to be stretched out to 56 months, just to make it that small. If we put it at 3 years, the payments would be as much as the lease.) Honestly, we're leaning towards the leasing at the moment. That could change after going in and talking to our bank, to the car dealers, etc, but frankly, we don't want to pile on interest again. We're thinking we could lease a brand new van, then when the lease is up, we could get a new van again, but this time buy it. Our credit will be much better in three years, because the bankruptcy will be off and plus we'd have other things as being paid on time, etc. And, with the lease, the van would be under warranty the whole time we had it (that is my understanding at this moment, maybe we're wrong.) Plus, with the lease, we could pick out all the little features we want.
I dunno. Maybe with our credit they wouldn't let us lease. We might have to just suck it up and get an older one and suck up the interest. Neither option is perfect, really.
We have plenty of time to make the decision (I think we're talking about looking in July) but I want to decide now lol. I know we won't, I just wish we could.
Oh, the back story. I had forgotten to do that. I'll make it short - we made a lot of stupid mistakes when we were first married. Financed what we shouldn't have. Thomas got laid off, things were going really bad. Decided to join the Navy. Navy recruiter said we had to file bankruptcy so that our debt to income ratio would be better, or the Navy wouldn't take him. So we did. Navy took their sweet time to accept Thomas. Talked to Army recruiter, joined Army. That's kind of two stories, but I felt I had to include that or people would be going "I thought he was in the Army?" Anyway, yeah.
written by indy1212
January 04, 2005 at 8:28 a.m.