Hey Everyone,
I'm at a dilemma here. So, I have a car that I bought in 2010 for $15,900, back then it was used and had 35,000 miles on it. I'm a car enthusiast (I have cooled that down so I no longer want to waste money on overpriced high performance cars) and so because of that, back then I thought it was a good idea to buy this high performance mazdaspeed6 car. It is a really fun car but I'm still $7,500 in the hole right now on it. I bought it for $15,900. Brand new this car was $34,000 so at least I didn't make that mistake! :)
However, my new mustachian ways, realizing that it is absolutely pointless to have a car like this for daily driving, and now a longer commute to work (20 minutes there and back) has caused me to start thinking about selling the car. But my mentally driven problem with this is, I know the car... I have done the maintenance on it, I know how it drives and when something is wrong with it. I know its past and where it's coming from. When buying a used car however, you are most likely buying someone else's problem. So there will be hidden quirks and issues that you will need to figure out after you purchase the car. I don't want to really go through that.
Current car payment is $260 a month, insurance is $80 a month. Current mileage on the car is 90k. I spend about 150-200 a month on gas due to the car getting only 19-22 MPG (280+ horsepower will do that). My thought is to buy a used car that is in the best condition I can get for $1,500 - $2,000, then start driving that and sell off the mazda. After selling the mazda, roll some of the extra money into the newly purchased used car to completely fix it up so I can get another couple years or so out of it.
I plan to go to the police auctions and buy a car from there. They usually sell dirt cheap and are perfectly good cars. Most of the time they are cheap because a door is smashed in or what not. But I so happen to have a mechanic in the family and I am sort of a car knocker on the side as well. So getting replacement parts (at the local junkyard) would be easy and I would have a perfectly good used car for cheap.
My current financial goal is to pay off my student loans. As it stands right now, i can throw 1,800 a month at the student loans. I have 40k to pay off, so i'm looking at roughly 2 years. If i were to be car payment free right now, i could tack on the additional 260 in savings a month to that and probably knock months off the student loan repayment. I want to pay off these loans ASAP.
Is it worth all of this effort, rather than just keeping my mazda, paying off the $7,500 and then driving it car payment free then on out until it turns to dust? Or, ditch it before major maintenance kicks in (probably at 120k miles) and I can save more money now month to month to help the student loan repayment?
Note: Another thing is that I live in Cleveland. Cars rust out here very very quickly. So this potential newly purchased used car could have a ton of rust issues and might not last as long as I hope. My current mazda doesn't have much rust yet.
thanks for the read!