Better to finance or buy a beater? (car loan, vehicles, 2010)
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My boyfriend wants to finance a six thousand dollar car, I think he should just save money and buy a cheap one for around one thousand on Craigslist. With my car, I have to pay $260 a month for it. I don't think we could afford another car and insurance payment right now.
He thinks we'd be better off financing the 6k car because it's less likely to break down. But what if it breaks down and we still have to make the payment?
Any thoughts? What would you do?
Having only one car isn't an option anymore, due to the hours we work and the distance to and from our employers.
You can finance a $6000.00 car? Is this buy here pay here (run like hell)? Or a personal bank loan with funds going to the car purchase? A $6k car is going to break down either way, get ready. Financing a vehicle has no bearing whatsoever on the mechanicals. What about one of those warrantys? Waste of money and good luck getting them to pay for anything on a car less than $15,000.
Have him buy a beater for $2k or less with cash. OP YOU will end up making the payments when he can't do so, don't sign for anything. There will be a massive guilt trip coming from him very soon either way.... Get ready this may be a relationship breaker.
Cheap used cars these days are nowhere near as expensive to maintain compared to the extra cost buying of a +4000usd car.
Especially when considering dealer markup, interest, blah blah.
Though I live in a rural area where labor costs for auto repair are low.
Though high labor cost can be partially mitigated by finding a craigslist mechanic or word of mouth mechanic. Buy parts cheap online.
I just bought a car for under 1k, private party. It 'needs' hundreds of dollars in work. (drives 'fine' for now though lol) The same exact model, dealerships sell for over 5k.
If the beater is a good runner and won't need much work, it's a great idea.
If the beater is a lemon and needs a ton of money poured into it, it'll be a constant reminder of what a bad idea that "you talked him into" and it'll be a source of resenment he'll have for you.
Let him do what he wants and sleep better at night.
It may be just me, but buying a car for 1K doesn't sound at all like a good idea.
With two exceptions I bought all mine for less than $1000. Of course I have to say that was between 1983 and 2004. Things are more expensive now. But you can still buy nice beaters (an oxymoron?) for around $1000. You just have to be patient and look around. And even if you have to spend $1500 on repairs on a $1000 car, your still ahead in my book. I do believe that for that price, you need to buy one from the 70's or earlier because of simple electrical and mechanical designs. Or a 80's Crown Vic or something else that was a proven design. Once again though, I am very aware of the fact that I am a very small proportion of the population that's feels this way.
It may be just me, but buying a car for 1K doesn't sound at all like a good idea.
That depends on the car and its condition, and whether or not you can do your own mechanical work.
Some people are better off just buying a new car, paying the $300 per month (total cost, including insurance & license), and knowing where their budget lies.
I made the huge mistake of buying a Toyota 4Runner at one of those "buy here, pay here" places and I did their "EZ FINANCE" too. It was the worst mistake ever. Yes the car was very clean and looked amazing but it was sold and financed AS IS. Guess what? No more than a week after I drove away it started overheating for no reason. Turns out it had a bad head gasket. Spoke to the backyard mechanic that worked at the dealership and he told me the owner buys these cars from auctions and makes sure to clean them up real nice especially the engine compartment. Told me probably half the cars on the lot had bad head gaskets but because the test drives are generally short and up in a cooler climate it never even comes close to over heating during the test drive so customers see nothing wrong.
Before I even had a chance to get estimates on the head gasket the transmission went out too. I called the owner and told him what happened and he just kept repeating AS IS. Well I told him that he could find his car AS IS on the side of the highway and if he wanted it he could come get it because I was walking away. He didn't listen and the county eventually towed it. Yeah I'm sure he reported it to the credit agency but I wasn't about to get even more ripped off. It was bad enough I shelled out 1K for the downpayment which I of course lost out on but at least now I know.
I drive a 22 year old $700 beater and I've taken it on trips and put 2400 miles on it in a week.
It has needed some repairs since I bought it with 107,000 miles on it about three years ago. But nothing was ever too major or expensive. I don't think I have another $700 in total in repairs, including tires. A few of the things were relatively normal maintenance, a couple of things were wierd or unique to these Chevy vans. And some of the things I was able to fix with parts off the van I had before this one.
But, I do as much of my own work as I can, I buy replacement parts used from a pull-a-part type salvage when possible, it's my fourth GM truck with a TBI and my second van so I have parts I've saved off the other ones set aside if I need them. I purposely chose this year as it has the best tune on the ECM chip for GM trucks with the TBI system, and that system is reliable - of the three others I had, two died of rust issues and the third one still ran when I sold it. My parents had one that had 320,000 miles on it when I sold it for them and the new owner drove it home as well. As a GM van, they built these for 25 years almost the same, and they share a ton of parts with 73-87 pickups as well, so when I do need new parts, they're easy to find and not usually expensive (oil cooler lines an exception).
Bottom line, if you can do your own work, it pays to have a beater, pick one that's relatively reliable to start with and relatively common so repair parts are cheap. Then set a budget limit - if you have to spend more than you can replace the car for, more than once, or if a major component like engine or transmission fails, it's time to move on to the next beater. Even then you can save yourself some grief by buying another of the same make/model/year and saving any relatively new parts to swap over to the next one.
The one other thing I'd add is it is worth the hassle if you are in a salt belt state to buy a car out of the south, bring it up and have it undercoated, even if you have to perform more major mechanical work to it. It almost made me sick to be picking parts off other vans in North and South Carolina all of which were body-wise in better shape than my own van. And mine appears to have come from the south before I got it, and was undercoated as well, as these vans go up here it's fairly decent.
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