Officially it’s $0, but since I paid the last one off it’s a few hundred a month to my ‘car’ savings account. This becomes both a dedicated vehicle repair fund as well as the down payment for the next car. It also means when I do get a new car, I don’t need to find that much in my monthly budget to make the new car payment. I tend to buy new & hold on to them so I don’t care about depreciation but prefer to not have something that may have been beat by a previous owner so that it will last a long time.
All my vehicles are free from loans (but not taxes, tags and registration fees, and insurance of course!)
When I did have a car payment is was about $325 a month.
I believe my minimum payment is 330 per month, but I’m paying like $1200 per month now on it. Was paying $500 for the longest time.
For the first time in my life, I actually kept a car long enough to pay it off! I’ve had my 2006 Mazda3 for exactly 7.5-years now. I paid off the loan in four years. In the 20 years prior to that, I never kept a car longer than three years and most less than that! I always felt that a new car was important…but my Mazda still looks and drives great and the one thing I love more than having a new car is NOT having a car payment!
I was even more impressed last year when my grandmother died and left me a nice chunk of change (that I wasn’t expecting), I put it in savings and fought the desire to go buy a new car!
But I also remember how hard it was when I was only 20-21, bringing home $300/week and paying a $550 car payment and $250/month insurance premium! I also have a friend who currently pays almost $1000/month for her Lexus SUV (the big one) and she is miserable!
I’m 45 years old. I make six-figures. I have never had a car payment. What’s that? 
I buy used, and with cash. I am currently driving a 2001 Saturn. Will drive it until the wheels fall off.
I recently hired a young engineer fresh out of college. The first thing he did was buy (actually lease) a brand new car after getting hired. He asked me why I don’t drive a new car. “Can’t you afford one?” He asked. I replied, “Yes, I can afford one. I can buy a new Corvette, today, if I wanted to.” His mouth opened, his eyes got big, and he was almost speechless. “You… you… you can?! Then why ***don’t ***you??” :rolleyes:
Paid off 9 years ago
Mine’s paid off as of four or five years ago; however, when I was paying a payment on it, the payment was $214.32 per month. I got a great deal on my car. The next car I buy I’ll get used, but that won’t happen until this one either falls apart or my kids can’t fit in it anymore. Cars lose value so quickly and I’ll need one that’s larger than the one I’ve got, so it’ll be more expensive.
A couple months ago it was $300, but now it’s $00.
I paid for my last car in cash. I understand not everyone can do that but if you look at how much a car loan costs you over the life of the loan, you will readjust your idea of what you can really afford.
About $408/month (I’m paying every two weeks, but I forget that exact amount too, offhand!), over 60 months.
It makes me sick, I’ve watched my mom write a check for the last four vehicles that she purchased. The first one was a new 1995 Jeep Grand Cherokee for $28k and change. She paid for it with part of her divorce settlement from my dad. Then she drove it for about 10 years and saved money for the next one…and the latest was a new 2012 Mazda CX-9 GT last Thanksgiving weekend. It stickered for $39k, with a lot of hardball negotiating I got it down to $29,706 with incentives and got full KBB trade-in value for her old car (more than that Explorer from Hell was worth) and she wrote a check for $22k and change…not bad for a car that started at almost $40k!
They’re paid off.
The poll results are interesting. I expected that a lot of posters would tend to have low to zero payments, given Dopers seem frugal. I get the idea most regard their vehicle as a necessary tool.
I’m wondering how the poll would look if posted to an auto enthusiast forum? Unfortunately, I’m not a member of any, yet I am pretty curious now.
My lease payment is $369, but the other car is paid off. We would own both, but the cost of a minivan was prohibitive and our miles are very low so we opted to lease the minivan. One more three-year lease term on that and the girls will be driving themselves, so we’ll go back to owning clunkers.
FWIW, the other car was paid for in cash. It just made more sense to finance this one and put our cash towards other purchases since we got a very very good financing rate on it. It’s an open loan, so I’ll likely pay it off before term.
I’m seeing a lot of 0% to 0.9% loans again. At that rate, it makes sense to me to finance.
And again, I’m finding the poll results interesting. It has made me revaluate my thoughts on my cash on hand, meaning I’d rather finance something and keep my cash as a reserve for something unexpected. Yet, financing means I probably buy something more than I really need.
Meh, oh well.
I am a member of two different Mazda-enthusiast websites. Most of the other members on both sites trade cars every 2-3 years and a lot of them spend thousands more on upgrades after the purchase.
The somewhat disturbing trend I’ve noticed over the last 6-8 months or so is that more and more young, 1st or 2nd time buyers are choosing 72-month (or even 84-month, which has just started showing up in the last month or two) loans!
I know a 23-year old kid on one of the sites bought a 2013 MAZDASPEED3 Touring 5-door with a sticker price of $27,480. He only got the price down to $27,000 and they gave him $2000 more than he owed on his trade-in, so he financed $25k plus tax, tag, title and fees. He signed a 72-month loan at 8.99% interest and the payment is $488/month! That payment is about $138 over what he could afford, and even then it would have been a stretch!
He also made the mistake of getting an insurance quote for the Mazda3 i 5-door and NOT the MAZDASPEED3 version! The difference- a 2.0L 155hp 4-cylinder engine vs. a 263hp 2.3L turbocharged, intercooled, direct injection 4-cylinder. Instead of paying around $160/month for insurance as he expected, he is paying $290+ and that’s with $2500 deductibles on Comp and Collision…
So the kid is paying about $770/month for the car and insurance and that’s almost two weeks bring-home pay! As if it couldn’t get any worse, he has also been caught SPEEDING (SPEED is right there in the car’s name, so it wasn’t much of a shock) and got a ticket for going 94 in a 65 zone! The next time his insurance is up for renewal, they will either non-renew him and he’ll be at the mercy of some other non-standard insurer…or they’ll hike the rate by another $80/month or so!
At least they managed to sell him GAP coverage. The best thing that could happen to that poor kid is for a Mack truck to plow it over while it’s parked and he’s not in it. Totaling it is the only way he’ll ever get out of it…
I don’t want to use the word ‘stupid’ or ‘ignorant’, but I guess I was just more practical when I was 23! I bought a new 1996 Accord when I was 21 and my payjments were $332 for 60 months. But I also had a lot of equity in my trade-in and the Accord was only $18k new.
Even at that payment, I regretted buying it within a few days and spent three LONG years hating that damn car!!! I’m the only person I’ve ever known who bought an Accord that turned out to be a LEMON…but this one was nothing but trouble! In those three years that I had it, the cam seal failed twice (spewing every drop of oil out of the engine while I was driving on the highway, the second time causing a small under-hood fire)! The synchronizer cones on 2nd and 3rd gear wore so badly that I had to replace the 5-speed manual with another one from a wrecked Accord. The A/C comprewssor locked up, two alternators went bad and the fuel pump went out…all within 3-years and 84k miles…but the warranty expired at 36k miles and only paid for one of the cam seal failures! I went ape-shit crazy the second time it failed and caused the fire and they did an ‘after-warranty exception’ foir that, but the other crap was all out of my pocket…
I got rear-ended while stopped at a red-light and, as I heard the screeching as the driver slammed on the brakes and saw it flying toward me in rear-view mirror, I was actually relieved…if I wasn’t killed or permanently and severely injured by the impact, I would be free of that damn car once and for all…
If nothing else, I can say that it protected me from the crash better than I expected. The impact forced me into the car in front of me and casued both airbags to deploy, (they are NOT as soft as they look, either) and they burn…but some airbag burns, bruises, a few broken fingers were the only immediate injuries…two years later, I discovered that it also damaged two discs in my cervical spine and evnetualyl got to have a not-so-fun surgery called a Cervical Spine Fusion…but I got rid of that damned Accord and bought a gorgeous, perfect, used '94 Acura Legend…
The two main risks, even with 0.0% financing, are buying more car than you need and/or could otherwise afford AND potentially being ‘upside-down’ in the loan without a significant down payment. But if you remain sensible in your vehicle choice and buy GAP insurance coverage (from your auto insurance company and not the dealer, it’s much cheaper) you minimize or eliminate those risks!
Hodna (and Acura) are also running some pretty amazing lease deals at the moment, too. In particular, they’re offering $0 down lease deals that are literally ‘sign and drive’. A 2013 Acura TSX for $330/month, 2013 Honda Accord LX for $280 or EX for $310/mo or 2013 Civic LX 4-door for $230/mo. Those are all 36-month leases and only include 10k miles per year, but still could be a pretty sweet deal for someone who wanted to lease!
Even Mazda is offering a 36-month lease on the GORGEOUS new 2014 Mazda6 i Sport Automatic for $229/month, with $1999 due at lease signing and 12k miles per year.
I paid of my 2006 Mazda3 just over three years ago and my payments were $377 per month on a 48-month loan at 2.9%. I know that I will eventually have a car payment again, but my goal is to have one around $250/month.
I know what you mean. It was a tough decision to finance that much (I put a couple thousand down, but not all that much). On the other hand, I’m in my 30s, have a good salary, and drove the same car for 14 years (bought used…it was 16+ years old at the time I turned it over to scrap!). I had to justify the expense to myself, but then again in my financial situation, buying a $24000 car (taxes included) wasn’t all that much of an extravagance. 
Zero. I’ve never bought a new car. Not because I couldn’t afford one but because I could afford more car (The one I’m driving now had a $41,000 sticker price when new), and not take a depreciation hit, and use my money for other things.