What is your monthly car payment, and if you have more than one, please list the highest (not the total combined)?
I’ve been curious about this, given the rising cost of autos, and especially the premium price of large trucks and SUVs that are so popular on the road.
For over a decade now, I have been able to keep my payment at around $300 per month, or just under. This has been with a maximum of 66 month loan and purchasing vehicles below the mid $20,000s.
Unfortunately, that’s not the case now, due to a poor purchasing decision. :smack: But oh well, given all the premium vehicles on the road (mine is not), I assume I’m still on the low end.
So what do you pay? Also, if you want, post whether you pay extra per month. I usually shoot for 1.5x the payment, depending on what APR I get.
It was about $200 while I was still paying it but I’d put quite a bit down and had a fantastic loan rate. Also, it’s a Honda Fit, so it’s way cheaper than an SUV in the first place.
Just bought a 2013 Mazda3, and the payment is $175 (over 60 months; put ~$14K down), but plan to pay it off in a few months. I only financed to get the negotiated deal; must carry the loan throught three payments before paying off in order for the dealership to get their loan commission.
$353.21 a month on a 2008 Ford Mustang GT. Bought it at the end of Summer 2011, traded my 2006 Scion Xa for it. The Stang only had 9,000 miles on it when I bought it. I was still legally married at the time and made a rash decision to buy it without immediately realizing just how much my ex-wife’s bad credit impacted my credit score so I got a shitty loan rate on the car.
$124 bi-weekly. Or if you do the math, $267 a month I suppose.
ETA: But then again cars are about 25% more expensive in Canada. The main reason being that we’re being taken advantage of, and no one can explain the reason behind this.
We had two paid off cars, but decided to get a Volvo when my daughter started driving. Put down 20% or more, payment is around 470, over 3 years, iirc. My car is paid for, eight years old, with around 60K miles on it.
I have no payment currently, because I got a small inheritance a few years ago and one of the first things I did was to retire my car loan. When I had a payment, it was $398/month on a 2008 Chevy Impala. I only put $2000 down, as I recall. Unfortunately, the car is starting to age, and some time in the next year or so, I’ll probably have to think about replacing it. I dread having a car payment again.
Nothing! I was able to pay cash (well, a bank draft, you know, not a briefcase full of bills,) for my first car, mostly based on a tax rebate and some of my Grandmother’s inheritance.
And I’m glad I don’t have to pay off a car loan. Ghost is expensive enough just with gas, oil changes, insurance, occasional body shop visits, license fees, and so on…
All paid off. But my vehicle is nearly 20 years old.
Sometimes it seems like my ongoing maintenance is equivalent to a car payment. Somehow it always has something break a week before the roadworthiness vehicle inspection is due.
Mine is paid off. As someone said earlier, it’s a Honda Fit and thus pretty cheap - I got it for 17K after taxes and fees and everything. I was very happy not to have to pay it off.
You wouldn’t catch me dead in an SUV anyway, but I wouldn’t buy a car that would saddle me with a large payment for a long time. A $17K car runs just as well as a $40K car. Maybe it doesn’t have all the pretties, but it is blue raspberry.
I received advice early in life to start out with a cheap used vehicle, learn how to do the fixes it requires, and make car payments in the form of saving money so you can afford to pay cash for the next vehicle. This has worked great and has avoided the need to pay a ton of money to banks in the form of loan interest.
We pay $318/mo. for our Honda minivan, which we leased last fall. I owned my daily driver outright at that time, but over the winter my car sort of disintigrated out from under me, so I had to replace it. We were tired of getting burned with used cars, so I bought a 2013 Wrangler Sport, at $300/mo. It was better with only one car payment, but we need relaible, safe transportation. My wife works, and shuttles the kids around for after school activities. I commute 25 miles each way.
