fbpx
:::: MENU ::::

Browsing posts in: Work

4 Budgeting Tips for Paying Your Car Back

by

A car is often an important part of living a comfortable and efficient life. This is why it’s important to be able to pay your car back with minimal hassle so that you continue to benefit from it. Doing so in the right way can also help you to save money and get the best value over time. Outlined below are four tips that you can use to pay your car back and get the best out of your hard-earned money.

1. Adjust Your Budget

The first thing that you should think about doing is to adjust your budget overall. This means that you need to take a close look at your income and expenses to make sure that you’re not spending more money than you need to. Keep in mind that you need to have an emergency savings account that you can rely on in case of an emergency to secure your money and budgeting efforts as you never know what could happen next. Note that around the world, 1.25 million people die in road accidents every single year. An additional 20 to 50 million of them sustain injuries or even permanent disabilities due to traffic collisions every year. To have a better chance of bouncing back after getting involved in an accident, you need to come up with a fool-proof budget.

2. Refinance Your Loan

Another helpful step to take is to try and seek refinancing for your loan. This can help you to get better terms for your loan that will make it possible to pay it off in an easy way. You can even improve your credit score in this process and get a better outcome, all things considered. Being one of the Americans who drive their trucks and cars around 10,000 miles every year means that you’re likely to have more car-ownership expenses besides paying for the car itself. These include repairs, service, and gas expenses. That’s why you should approach your financiers and ask them to give you something like an earlier payoff date which may see you getting a lower interest rate.

3. Make an Additional Payment Yearly

It’s also a good idea for you to save money throughout the year so that, at the end of the year, you’re able to make an additional large payment towards your car. Keep in mind that you also need to maintain your vehicle throughout the year in order to get the best service out of it. For this, note that a used car that has a service history is 23% more valuable than one that hasn’t had regular maintenance done to it. This is the reason why you need to take good care of your car so that when you finish paying for it, it’s in an amazing state that can give you good service. If you can keep your car in good shape and manage to also make a large payment towards it at the end of every year, you’ll enjoy a lower overall balance which will lead to saving more money in interest.

4. Pay Once Every Two Weeks

Finally, you should think about making a payment towards your car once every two weeks, as opposed to once at the end of every month. This may mean that you can make an additional payment each year and therefore make some savings. While doing this, you should also consider rounding up your payments to the nearest larger amount. Over time, this additional amount will get you closer to the end of your payments.

These four budgeting tips should help you pay your car back in a shorter time than you may have planned for. Give them some consideration and try one of them at a time. This may make it easier for you to achieve the goals that you set for your car payments and help you become a car owner with considerably less stress.

We Did Our Taxes And It Was A Nightmare

by

Taxes

Every year, I dread doing our taxes. For a number of reasons, this year I wasn’t able to submit all of our paperwork until the day before they were due. I was stressed to the max and I knew that we’d owe (probably more than we have in previous years). I was right.

Filing Taxes This Year

The biggest difference with filing our taxes this year is that my husband had a notable income. In previous years, he was either out of work or working a low-paying mechanic job ($250-$400 per week). Then he got into freelancing, but that doesn’t always bring in reliable income either. So, for the most part, we lived on what I made.

About a year ago, he was hired on by a multi-national company to write content for car manufacturers like GM, Buick, Ford, Chevy, etc. He’s been doing a fantastic job and it made our finances way easier to manage. We haven’t felt the crunch of living paycheck to paycheck as we did before. However, the increased income had a significant impact on where we landed in the tax brackets.

I work on a 1099 and taxes aren’t taken out. He’s a W2 employee and has taxes taken out, plus all of our health insurance costs. Despite this, we wound up owing about $15K this year in taxes (state and federal combined). We have a portion of this and can make a partial payment, but we will need to set up a payment plan with the IRS to pay off the rest. Thankfully, that’s an option for us.

But what a nightmare! I was expecting to owe, but certainly not this much. My annual earnings actually went down last year, but our household income increased and tax laws changed.

So, now our number one goal is to find a way to start paying this off – and fast. No one wants to be in debt with the IRS – it’s nerve wracking.

Our Plans Moving Forward

We are going to do a few things to get this off our plate quicker and ensure it doesn’t happen again. First, we are going to take an aggressive approach to paying it off. We plan to pay about $500/month towards the debt with the IRS. That’s simply what we can afford right now after clearing out what we had set aside for taxes already ($5,000).

For next year, we plan to try and set aside more money to have for when we file. We are also planning on hiring someone next year so that it’s not so stressful on me (I was in tears doing taxes on Monday). Having a certified professional do them may also help us find additional deductions that we aren’t currently claiming.

Have any of you experienced being in debt with the IRS? I’d love to hear about your experiences and how you got through it.

Read More