If you had to pick just 1 car to keep, which one would you keep? (993 vs 740i)
03-07-2010, 11:45 AM
#31
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ok, i read the rest...and this is not gonna be a pleasant post, but quite frankly you need a kick in the ***.
The 993 needs to go asap. As I recall it needs either an SAI flush or more likely a topend. Dump it.
The bimmer? Nice car, but if you are struggling with a mortgage, that needs to go.
Wife's car? Unless its a lease, dump it.
So, now you've got $40k in cash from the sale of the 993 and bmw.
Buy yourself a well used but well maintained Ford Crown Victoria. It has zero style, but it rides great, is reliable as a stone, and makes driving around DC a piece of cake. This should cost no more than $5k.
REFINANCE THE HOUSE. Get over the mental block of thinking that you'll be 79 before its paid off. Who cares? Right now you need to lower your cash outflows and this is a great way to do it. If you get a higher paying job later, than you can move forward with paying it off early.
How anyone is suggesting that he mess with his house for a car, I cannot even fathom.
There are THOUSANDS of 993s and they are not that expensive. In a few years when you're in better shape and you've saved some cash, get a 96 C2. The experience won't be any different.
You need to face hard facts here. If you cannot afford your mortgage, you have absolutely ZERO need for an older maintenance heavy bmw luxury car or a Porsche sports car.
The 993 needs to go asap. As I recall it needs either an SAI flush or more likely a topend. Dump it.
The bimmer? Nice car, but if you are struggling with a mortgage, that needs to go.
Wife's car? Unless its a lease, dump it.
So, now you've got $40k in cash from the sale of the 993 and bmw.
Buy yourself a well used but well maintained Ford Crown Victoria. It has zero style, but it rides great, is reliable as a stone, and makes driving around DC a piece of cake. This should cost no more than $5k.
REFINANCE THE HOUSE. Get over the mental block of thinking that you'll be 79 before its paid off. Who cares? Right now you need to lower your cash outflows and this is a great way to do it. If you get a higher paying job later, than you can move forward with paying it off early.
How anyone is suggesting that he mess with his house for a car, I cannot even fathom.
There are THOUSANDS of 993s and they are not that expensive. In a few years when you're in better shape and you've saved some cash, get a 96 C2. The experience won't be any different.
You need to face hard facts here. If you cannot afford your mortgage, you have absolutely ZERO need for an older maintenance heavy bmw luxury car or a Porsche sports car.
Pretty much sums it up.
03-07-2010, 11:47 AM
#32
Race Car
It's a tough dilemma, the biggest problem is that if you sold the Porsche your financial problems still wouldn't go away completely and you would still be tapping into your savings account every month.
In short....sell the pcar, sell the 740i (cause let's face it, a $2500 repair bill is just around the corner on that one), and refinance to reduce your monthly burn. In 2 to 3 yrs when things stabilize, consider what ride you want to have.
03-07-2010, 12:19 PM
#33
03-07-2010, 12:23 PM
#34
I think irrespective of which car (or both) that you decide to sell (realistically, the P-car should go IMHO), you should refinance to give you more flexiblity in managing your cash flow. Fixed rates are pretty low right now and if you wait until later you may not have the flexibility (if say, you lose your job or can't work, etc) to refi.
Even though you refi into a longer 30 year mortgage, most mortgages give you the ability to prepay the principal...so you can get the 30 year loan and if you like you can still make the same payments as today so that it's effectively still a 15 year mortgage. Also if can pay twice a month instead of once a month, that will also reduce the overall tenor.
Even though you refi into a longer 30 year mortgage, most mortgages give you the ability to prepay the principal...so you can get the 30 year loan and if you like you can still make the same payments as today so that it's effectively still a 15 year mortgage. Also if can pay twice a month instead of once a month, that will also reduce the overall tenor.
03-07-2010, 12:24 PM
#35
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Steve, not refinancing now is risky and is like throwing away money. Interest rates are st record lows so take advantage of them. You can still keep paying he loan off at your current rate if you want.
03-07-2010, 12:42 PM
#36
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Steve,
First and foremost you have to take care of your family. They are counting on you to make the right decisions. Cars although fun will not do that on a good day. Let the 993 go, for now. You can always replace it later when the time is right. My planner has always told me to take the 30 year note and pay the house off early. This will give you room if or when you need it. Then you can ride this cycle out and still feel good about it. I don't know how the home market is in your area but selling would not be beneficial, especially in your sales price.
First and foremost you have to take care of your family. They are counting on you to make the right decisions. Cars although fun will not do that on a good day. Let the 993 go, for now. You can always replace it later when the time is right. My planner has always told me to take the 30 year note and pay the house off early. This will give you room if or when you need it. Then you can ride this cycle out and still feel good about it. I don't know how the home market is in your area but selling would not be beneficial, especially in your sales price.
03-07-2010, 12:55 PM
#37
Sell the 740, the 993, the wife's BMW and some of your other toys (the new Mac you had in a pic around the holidays). Use eBay and craigslist to clean out some of the closets of your 6000 sq ft house.
Times are tough and you need to put your priorities in order. If you are so tight on cash you really should cut the extras before withdrawing from your 401k. Sell your current vehicles and get a used Honda that sips the gas, has low repair costs and cheap liability insurance.
If times turn around for you, do not step right back into a p-car. Pay off the house and bank some cash.
Once your nest egg is established, then you get the green light for p-car ownership.
Hope this works out for you, but do the required reduction of capital outlays.
Also look into adding a separate electric meter for your rental space. An all utilities included deal is going to eat up the rental cash flow. You can get a separate personal meter installed that you can use to set usage limits for your tenants (include XX number of KW hours per month then start charging a $ base don the overage). I have them installed in my home to monitor usage of power for my in home office.
Times are tough and you need to put your priorities in order. If you are so tight on cash you really should cut the extras before withdrawing from your 401k. Sell your current vehicles and get a used Honda that sips the gas, has low repair costs and cheap liability insurance.
If times turn around for you, do not step right back into a p-car. Pay off the house and bank some cash.
Once your nest egg is established, then you get the green light for p-car ownership.
Hope this works out for you, but do the required reduction of capital outlays.
Also look into adding a separate electric meter for your rental space. An all utilities included deal is going to eat up the rental cash flow. You can get a separate personal meter installed that you can use to set usage limits for your tenants (include XX number of KW hours per month then start charging a $ base don the overage). I have them installed in my home to monitor usage of power for my in home office.
03-07-2010, 01:01 PM
#38
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Damn, there is a lot of great advise here with a lot of supporting rational. Keep the house and refinance the it, dump the 993 and hang in there until the economy rebounds. Most of all, keep your head screwed on straight! You have made me step back and count my blessings. Good luck.
03-07-2010, 01:09 PM
#39
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Thread Starter
ok, i read the rest...and this is not gonna be a pleasant post, but quite frankly you need a kick in the ***.
The 993 needs to go asap. As I recall it needs either an SAI flush or more likely a topend. Dump it.
The bimmer? Nice car, but if you are struggling with a mortgage, that needs to go.
Wife's car? Unless its a lease, dump it.
So, now you've got $40k in cash from the sale of the 993 and bmw.
Buy yourself a well used but well maintained Ford Crown Victoria. It has zero style, but it rides great, is reliable as a stone, and makes driving around DC a piece of cake. This should cost no more than $5k.
REFINANCE THE HOUSE. Get over the mental block of thinking that you'll be 79 before its paid off. Who cares? Right now you need to lower your cash outflows and this is a great way to do it. If you get a higher paying job later, than you can move forward with paying it off early.
How anyone is suggesting that he mess with his house for a car, I cannot even fathom.
There are THOUSANDS of 993s and they are not that expensive. In a few years when you're in better shape and you've saved some cash, get a 96 C2. The experience won't be any different.
You need to face hard facts here. If you cannot afford your mortgage, you have absolutely ZERO need for an older maintenance heavy bmw luxury car or a Porsche sports car.
The 993 needs to go asap. As I recall it needs either an SAI flush or more likely a topend. Dump it.
The bimmer? Nice car, but if you are struggling with a mortgage, that needs to go.
Wife's car? Unless its a lease, dump it.
So, now you've got $40k in cash from the sale of the 993 and bmw.
Buy yourself a well used but well maintained Ford Crown Victoria. It has zero style, but it rides great, is reliable as a stone, and makes driving around DC a piece of cake. This should cost no more than $5k.
REFINANCE THE HOUSE. Get over the mental block of thinking that you'll be 79 before its paid off. Who cares? Right now you need to lower your cash outflows and this is a great way to do it. If you get a higher paying job later, than you can move forward with paying it off early.
How anyone is suggesting that he mess with his house for a car, I cannot even fathom.
There are THOUSANDS of 993s and they are not that expensive. In a few years when you're in better shape and you've saved some cash, get a 96 C2. The experience won't be any different.
You need to face hard facts here. If you cannot afford your mortgage, you have absolutely ZERO need for an older maintenance heavy bmw luxury car or a Porsche sports car.
and then maybe a ...
with a Zlott thrown in for good measure -
The old Batman show really offered up some great new words to our vocabulary which summarize my feelings lately.
I will check with my finance guy next week about refinancing our house. The thought of selling it and losing $52k in the real estate commission right off the bat after the sale is a good point to consider. That's a nice C4S with about 21k miles in pristine condition with no CEL on.
We live in an area where home sales are hot, so selling it would at the most be a 2-3 month proposition, I'm guessing. We bought it for $960k with some inheritance money and the sale of our old house (sold that for $640K). We had to put $40k into it before moving in to our current home as it had some major cat smell problems that require a ridiculous amount of money to fix (turns out they had 10 stray cats but they hid the smells well with air fresheners all throughout the house, fooling even the home inspector). Ripped out all carpets, had to put in wood floors where most of the carpet used to be, even upstairs, etc. Long story - don't want to go there right now. Our neighbor bought his house last fall for $885k and it doesn't have the accessory apt above the garage, a $50k extra when they were new, and it doesn't have a rear sunroom off the kitchen, a $35k extra. I'm guessing we could get $900k or $915k in this market. In this pics below you can see the attic apt and the sunroom in the back that the new neighbor to our right doesn't have.
Do I want to drive a Crown Vic? No, but I'm getting your point. Life changes and you have to roll with it. I'll probably wait to sell the 740i until it really needs something big. It's been a great car which last year only cost $700 to maintain. Yeah, the year before it was over $3500, so I hear what you're saying.
Wife's car is a 2007 Acura RL that she "needs" for AWD to get to the ski areas in the winter (she only goes a few times a year now and it's just local - pretty cheap mid week). I'd have to pry it from her dead, dying hands to sell it. She loves that car. We bought an extended 8 year warranty for it for only $1300 so it'll be a good car for the long run. We plan on keeping it. It's probably worth about $24k now, bought it new for $41k, 2.5 years ago when the MSRP was around $47k. I guess we could sell it and get her a 5 year old Jeep Cherokee for around $13k with 60K miles. It would be a hard sell to get her to do this.
Another great Batman expression...
03-07-2010, 01:13 PM
#40
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Steve, First off I am sorry you are in the current Job situation you are in.
I do not know you, we are not best friends and this is a public forum, so I appologize if I will be hard on you, but I agree with Quadcammer.
This is a 3 second decission. SELL THE Porsche. Forget the fact that it gets you some money tpo pay of a good chunk of the mortgage (25%) and releives soem of the stress in the family. While you are at it sell the BMW. THere are lots of reliebel cars out there, and many of them are American you get get for hardly any money. Will it crimp yur "style" Sure, so what. You are who you are not the BMW or the Porsche. Your wife married you for you not the damn cars.
I am not a watch person so I do not remeber but Brendan posted something abotu an expenseive watch. DUMP it. Shops arroudn the corner are cool but shopping there when there is so much stress at home, not cool.
Going out to dinner, expenseive and not cool ( I assume based ont eh home prices where you live, there are lots of fancy places to eat and be entertained).
I have a good income, and I am very gratefull for that, but I cna nto get myslef to spend $1000 on suspension (my car has 96K on original suspension) because it will make me feel a bit better but it really will not improve my life that much.
Again sorry fo the "attack" but grow up. Sell the toys, dont touch the 401 and live your life. Your life is not because of the toys.
You did not have them when you were born and the day you die, you dont win anything if you have mroe toys.
I do not know you, we are not best friends and this is a public forum, so I appologize if I will be hard on you, but I agree with Quadcammer.
This is a 3 second decission. SELL THE Porsche. Forget the fact that it gets you some money tpo pay of a good chunk of the mortgage (25%) and releives soem of the stress in the family. While you are at it sell the BMW. THere are lots of reliebel cars out there, and many of them are American you get get for hardly any money. Will it crimp yur "style" Sure, so what. You are who you are not the BMW or the Porsche. Your wife married you for you not the damn cars.
I am not a watch person so I do not remeber but Brendan posted something abotu an expenseive watch. DUMP it. Shops arroudn the corner are cool but shopping there when there is so much stress at home, not cool.
Going out to dinner, expenseive and not cool ( I assume based ont eh home prices where you live, there are lots of fancy places to eat and be entertained).
I have a good income, and I am very gratefull for that, but I cna nto get myslef to spend $1000 on suspension (my car has 96K on original suspension) because it will make me feel a bit better but it really will not improve my life that much.
Again sorry fo the "attack" but grow up. Sell the toys, dont touch the 401 and live your life. Your life is not because of the toys.
You did not have them when you were born and the day you die, you dont win anything if you have mroe toys.
03-07-2010, 01:21 PM
#41
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In glancing through all this, what I take away is that the 993 doesn't work for what you need in a car, day to day. So then really all it is (though loved and cared for) is a somewhat expensive piece of art. Yeah, it's drivable, etc. But you don't use it for any practical purpose in your life.
So, if it doesn't make economic sense to have it around then you probably shouldn't.
(I won't speak to lifestyle, etc. since we live in a 1500 sq ft house that my parents bought in 1963. Even by Bay Area prices my "fleet" approaches 50% of what the house is worth...........)
Ultimately, there will always be many cars to choose from should your circumstances change for the better and you can treat yourself again.
So, if it doesn't make economic sense to have it around then you probably shouldn't.
(I won't speak to lifestyle, etc. since we live in a 1500 sq ft house that my parents bought in 1963. Even by Bay Area prices my "fleet" approaches 50% of what the house is worth...........)
Ultimately, there will always be many cars to choose from should your circumstances change for the better and you can treat yourself again.
03-07-2010, 01:40 PM
#42
Racer
I think you summarized it yourself. You are living larger than you can afford.
The 993, sell it. The 740, sell it. The house, downsize, because it sounds it's larger and more luxurious than you need. It doesn't need to be a condo, but a smaller house. This is the time to buy real estate at the right (not market-inflated) price.
Do not touch retirement funds, you will be penalized (AKA taxed) and if your job situation doesn't get much better, how do you know you will be able to replace the funds?
Good luck and hope your situation gets better soon, and consider many Americans are making these decisions, but rather than on nice cars or houses, on something to eat tonight or on something essential to give up, so count yourself "luckier".
The 993, sell it. The 740, sell it. The house, downsize, because it sounds it's larger and more luxurious than you need. It doesn't need to be a condo, but a smaller house. This is the time to buy real estate at the right (not market-inflated) price.
Do not touch retirement funds, you will be penalized (AKA taxed) and if your job situation doesn't get much better, how do you know you will be able to replace the funds?
Good luck and hope your situation gets better soon, and consider many Americans are making these decisions, but rather than on nice cars or houses, on something to eat tonight or on something essential to give up, so count yourself "luckier".
03-07-2010, 02:06 PM
#44
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Hey Steve, minus the 'kick in the a**', I believe Quadcommer is spot on. And techsis...
Cars come and go, when the situation changes you can always buy a 993.
GL with your decision.
As far as buying a condo in Bethesda, since I'm familiar with you area (we live 10-15 mins apart), hell no! You will be miserable, since in you hear you'er a toys-r-us kid and will eventually need a garage. As it is you don't owe much on your house, and I don't believe you're upside down either. So it will be foolish to move into a condo or touch you retierement, which isn't a 101k.
Cars come and go, when the situation changes you can always buy a 993.
GL with your decision.
As far as buying a condo in Bethesda, since I'm familiar with you area (we live 10-15 mins apart), hell no! You will be miserable, since in you hear you'er a toys-r-us kid and will eventually need a garage. As it is you don't owe much on your house, and I don't believe you're upside down either. So it will be foolish to move into a condo or touch you retierement, which isn't a 101k.
03-07-2010, 03:31 PM
#45
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Sell the bimmer and the porsche.
This is an absolute no brainer. Get yourself a used camary (already said).
I'd even think about selling the house also, but after fees and taxes, its only worth doing this if you really down-size.
You should think about cutting down on luxuries. Go through your monthly household expenditure and work out your outgoings, and work out what you can cut.
Remember, that financial stress can make you sick, to better to act firmly now and remove/reduce the financial issues before it affects your health.
Better times might be around the corner, or they might not, so the better financial health you are in the better you will weather anything else that comes along.
Seriously you just need to get on with this.
This is an absolute no brainer. Get yourself a used camary (already said).
I'd even think about selling the house also, but after fees and taxes, its only worth doing this if you really down-size.
You should think about cutting down on luxuries. Go through your monthly household expenditure and work out your outgoings, and work out what you can cut.
Remember, that financial stress can make you sick, to better to act firmly now and remove/reduce the financial issues before it affects your health.
Better times might be around the corner, or they might not, so the better financial health you are in the better you will weather anything else that comes along.
Seriously you just need to get on with this.