My name is Steven and I am 23 year old clean upper lipped software engineer with a strong desire to grow a full burly money mustache. I am 2 years our of college and still paying down my student loans. I have been exhibiting a lot of mustachian behaviors before I heard of MMM and I thought I was doing pretty well for myself.. But then I got punched in the face next door to Mister M$ney. I am amazed at how many ways I have been throwing money away these last 2 years due to weakness. I am actively making mustachian lifestyle changes and have lots of awesome room to improve my physic, but I realized that I made a grave mistake and I am not sure how to go about correcting it.
The car I was driving through HS and College (which we got for $0.01 from a family friend) broke down for good on me 1 year after college graduation. I landed a Web Dev role at Amazon with a significant pay raise. I had a tough case of excusitis and the long and the short of it was, I bought a new car, on credit....
I bought a 2013 Mazda 3 with < 50 miles on it and most of the bells and whistles available because the one I really wanted, blind spot monitoring, required that I get nearly all of them. I put a 4K down payment on it, the total of the stash I had been saving up for a car, and landed a 5-year 0% interest loan from Chase. Well a year and a half later I owe just about as much as it is worth, when sold to a private party, and am paying a whopping $620 a month on the car and insurance.
I have realized that I don't have a real need for a car, especially one as fancy and expensive as the one I bought, I now have no mustache, other than a few retirement plans which I pay max into, probably can't sell my car for what I owe on it, and desperately want to cut out this luxury expense from my life.
Are there any helpful mustachians out there that can give some advice on how best to go about selling a car which is likely under the loan for? Also would it be the best idea of cut my losses on the car right now (nearly $10K 1/3 of the total cost).
I am not paying interest on the car, and I would be able to own it for easily 20+ years considering how little I do drive it.. But w/o it I would be able to put $510 dollars towards some peach fuzz under my lip each month (the cost minus a $90/month buss pass I would be able to justify w/o the cost of the car).
I think that it would be worth the $10K loss to save another $20K that I still owe on the car because in the 3.5 years I still owe on the loan, the additional stash of $510 adds up to more than I owe on the car w/o any magical interest compounding taken into consideration.
That money saved up would be able to be properly used to buy a reasonable car in the future when I have a greater need for one, family and such, as a cash purchase.
But I am overwhelmed at the idea of trying to sell it... Can a mustache please help me become less overwhelmed by the task?