I am a recent convert to the Mustachian movement and relatively new to the whole debt free/retire young concept as well. I literally started working towards my goals at the beginning of the year after realizing that I make twice as much as most everyone I know, but don't feel like I am twice as successful or have twice as much to show for it. However, in this short year, I have already improved my credit score 100 points and dropped my monthly bills considerably.
My problem isn't in my newly developed success, it is in the unplanned consequences of decisions made just before I made this transition. So just before the start of the year, my wife and I were forced to buy two new vehicles. We had no plan, we just knew we needed them. Unfortunately, that came as my credit was literally months away from improving... again... 100 points. As you know, this is HUGE in terms of interest rates. We grabbed two loans with 17.9% interest rates. Put little money down and locked in a couple of 80 month loans. Completely the opposite of Mustachian! And we now know this and knowing how bad this move was absolutely kills me every day!
Since we had other debts that were more critical in nature, I never paid much more than the minimum payments. Now that those debts are gone, I can do considerably more, but... in comes a new unexpected plot twist... we have a FOURTH child due in December and both of our cars are too small to fit four booster/car seats without strapping a child to the hood. So now, we have two brand new cars, with high interest loans, with full balances... and we are upside down around $9k total.
Fortunately, I no longer need my car for commuting as I work from home. My wife is a stay at home mother. So we can realize savings by going down to a single car and taking the savings on insurance/car payments. And with the improved credit score, we are in a much better situation.... BUT... we have to get a full size SUV to meet our family needs.
What would you guys do? I have been battling in my head about this for months now and I would love some outside thoughts/ideas on possible options. My biggest issue is that it would literally cost me $9k just to walk away from these cars to get into a bigger vehicle that my family needs... but that $9k is enough to almost pay my Corolla off in full.