Anyone else considering not buying?!

[Syntax Error]

My advice is no personal debt ever throughout life. If you can’t pay cash you can’t afford it. My 2 cents.

You'll never own a house at that rate.

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[MakinDoForNow]

Being debt free will change your life, not only in the physical sense but mentally as well. Paying off your house is a big step. I use credit cards only to my advantage, Amex Blue Card 6% back on groceries and Ford Credit for the service work. Planning to order a new '24 when the time comes and paying for it by selling my '22, plus maybe a little boot money, but that's OK, new tires brakes, etc.

I had a friend that years ago bought a new car every year and traded in his "old" one with original oil and filter etc. Usually had around 60-70k miles on it.

 

[Grumpa]

My advice is no personal debt ever throughout life. If you can’t pay cash you can’t afford it. My 2 cents.

You must be Scottish! lol

 

[Grumpa]

I had a friend that years ago bought a new car every year and traded in his "old" one with original oil and filter etc. Usually had around 60-70k miles on it.

I use AMEX blue and get another 5% off on groceries on Thursdays. El Cheapo! lol

 

[WNYEscapee]

Just picked mine up last week. Yes, rates are much higher than when I bought my Ram which I traded in for the Maverick, but I still took money off the deal with the equity on the Ram which was a plus. My payment did bump a bit because of the rates and adding an extended warranty, but I stayed with the same lender(credit union) which took my loan and lowered the rate to beat out another one which wanted it. It's the second time this credit union has done so for my car loan. Financing called them and expressed I wanted to stay with them, and said though they're not really supposed to, they dropped their rates below the other institution to keep me.
In time, if rates come down, I will inquire about refinancing it with them, but for now, since I have an extended warranty which well exceeds my mileage and loan terms, plus what I am likely to be saving on gas, I'm still ahead. In addition, the refund on my trade's extended warranty is enough to make my first three payments, or pay for all my accessories and a payment or two.

 

[Mav_RICK]

Bottom line low interest rate even 0% is subsidized by the selling price being higher than it would otherwise need to be. It takes the mind of the average purchaser off the price he is paying and gets him to hurry up before it goes away. Part of the "I don't care what the total is I just care about the monthly hit" mentality.

Exactly right.

 

[Syntax Error]

Here's a credit union supposedly anyone can join. You can use the consumer council membership to join a bunch of different CUs all over the country.

https://www.americanconsumercouncil.org/membership.asp?dname=Americanconsumercouncil.org

Scroll to the bottom on the American consumer website and enter your information to join the consumer council.

Use this code USSFCU . It will be free to join.

Go to credit union page below and become a credit union member. You'll use your membership of the VACC to join the credit union.

It's $6 to open a free checkings and savings account.

Go here to join.
https://www.ussfcu.org/about-us/join-ussfcu


Checkout their rates on auto loans. Even the 84 month loan is under 5%.

Imagine when the Feds drop interest rates what their loan rates will be.
https://www.ussfcu.org/resources/rates.html

Thanks for the pointer, I'll give these guys a shot if their rates really are that good.

 

[JimParker256]

My father always said "Do not buy any vehicle you cannot afford to walk away from at next intersection". I bought my first edition lariat loaded at MSRP in March 2022 at 2.25% APR. Is hard to calculate true APR as the interest on funds that's transferred into the savings account the mav loan is auto paid from now earn more than the 2.25%. I learned in the 1980's that even 22.8% interest was not a problem if I could get a house built, sold, and closed within a week of completion. It not the rate that hurts it's the time you have it borrowed that matters. Consider volunteering for overtime at work and apply the extra money monthly to your regular scheduled payment. I have a nephew that many years ago bought a $200k house, wrote a check for every how much money over his monthly budget that was in his checking account. He had his house paid off in 41 months.

When I finally decided I was serious about retiring early, my wife and I took that same approach. The cars and truck were already paid off, so every surplus dollar above our living expenses went toward the mortgage. I got a huge bonus that year, and put it toward the loan principal. Got it paid off in less than 24 months, so we went into retirement with no debt at all. Felt so great when we got that "your mortgage is paid in full" letter...

 

[JimParker256]

Yup, I've thought long and hard about whether I'll take delivery based on available financing rates if mine gets built. Tough to pay over 5% when I've never had to pay that kind of interest rate for a car loan ever.

No one every truly got 0% car loans - Ford (and other manufacturers) were basically paying "points" on the normal 3-5% loans to lower the APR to 0%, 0.9%, or 1.9%... It works pretty much like a mortgage, where you can "buy down" the rate by paying up-front "points"... You can probably to the same thing today, if you find the right lender. Talk to your Credit Union - they are usually more "flexible" and personalized than the bigger banks.

 

[GingerMan512]

Anyone else looking at interest rates and considering not purchasing their Maverick? I have a June 12 build date and at this point the lowest interest rates I've seen are 5.5% which is crazy! I have two different trade in scenarios 2020 Soul ($5000 profit) OR 2017 Jetta (KBB $13k - all profit). Either way I'm sitting at a $430-$580 a month payment on a $30k truck. Maybe it's because I've never had a truck payment but that just seems very high to me.

Truck build, nothing special. Inlaws have property/cattle we're starting to get involved with so needed a few extras.

HPR - Ecoboost - Fx4 - 4k tow - SIBL/Rail

It’s really up to the individual. I added an extra $5k cash on top of my trade to mitigate a bit of the sting. I got a 5.16% rate from my CU.

 

[JimParker256]

Funny you mentioned because I sold my 2019 Forester to get my Maverick. I made money after paying off the loan.

Same here... Sold my 2015 C2500HD diesel for exactly $100 less than I had paid for it - out the door - when it was brand new. We owned it for 6 years and put about 48,000 miles on it, most of that pulling a large 5th wheel camper. Pretty amazing to drive 48K miles for only 0.2 cents per mile for depreciation!

We put that money in our savings account, to be used to replace my "beater" car... I had bought that car (a 2012 Prius C) in 2014 for $9,500 with unprepared hail damage. At the time it had about 42,000 miles on it. It was a decent car, but really cramped, and my wife found the seating positing extremely uncomfortable for more than 30 minutes at a time. I was happy to get rid of it. I had put close to 80K additional miles (total of ~126,000), and had sat out in a few more thunderstorms. I was pretty shocked when CarMax offered me $8,000 for it, and took it before they came to their senses... So not quite as good as the Chevy truck, but not bad depreciation expense... 80K miles for $1500 comes to roughly 1.9 cents per mile for depreciation...

With the proceeds from those two vehicles in savings, I was able to pay cash for the '22 Maverick Hybrid Lariat First Edition I lucked into. And we still have enough in that "car fund" to pay cash for the second Maverick when the Cyber Orange Maverick Lariat BAP gets here (scheduled for production the week of June 8th, per Ford's order tracker).

We are certainly living in crazy times!

 

[JimParker256]

Appreciate the information. It's not that I can't afford it, I've just never had a car payment before. Bought the Jetta outright and inherited the Soul loan from the woman. But her Soul loan is 0% interest. Comparing 0% to 5.5% just has me feel like it's not a good time to buy a truck. Cold feet maybe.

You've "never had a car payment before," so why the sudden "need" to finance one now? Since the Maverick is just about the least expensive vehicle you can purchase new these days, it makes no sense that you could afford to pay cash before, but suddenly need to finance a vehicle that is less expensive?

And if you've "never had a car payment," but could actually afford to make the payment on a 0% loan for the Maverick you ordered at least six months ago, you could have been "banking" that same car payment equivalent into your savings. Even six months of saving $400-500 a month would make a huge difference in the amount you'd have to finance, therefore dropping your payment to at least the level of a 0% loan, if not even lower.

I get that you "resent" paying interest on a loan. But 0% loans aren't "real"... That's the auto maker dumping inventory by lowering the cost through artificial means, without changing the MSRP... They basically pay the bank "points" on your loan to bring the rates down. It's a shell game to move vehicles when they aren't selling. Ford is having very little difficulty selling every Maverick it can produce, so you're not likely to see any "incentivized" loan rates any time soon... Want to get "$10K off" on a truck? Buy a Ram... They can't get rid of them, so they're offering all kinds of incentives.

 

[JimParker256]

My advice is no personal debt ever throughout life. If you can’t pay cash you can’t afford it. My 2 cents.

Darn few working people can afford to pay cash for a home. Nowadays, even "started homes" are over $200K... Within 80 miles of my present home, there are ZERO listings below $125K - and those are "fixer uppers" that need $50-$100K of work to be habitable.

It's Nice that you're wealthy enough, or have a job that pays enough to make you the exception, but I suspect one would have to earn well over $100K for "cash" ownership of a home to be even a remote possibility. By the time you pay rent, utilities, transportation, food, etc. there just isn't enough left over to save enough to buy a house outright... My social-worker daughter is going through this realization right now, as she's trying to find some way she can buy a home.

 

[icegradner]

Darn few working people can afford to pay cash for a home. Nowadays, even "started homes" are over $200K...

That's cheap! A house that's full of mold, and falling apart is $1.2 million here, ain't nobody without a silver spoon in their hands at birth buying a house without a mortgage.

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