by Claire
Your comments got my wheels turning (pun intended) on what I will need to do once the debt is paid off. I think I was so focused on not even going there that the obvious did not occur to me until your comments started streaming. I need to buy a car. As some of you might recall I am currently the beneficiary of my generous parents and am driving a vehicle they were not using but did not want to get rid of. I need to return that to them and so I’ll be facing the decision of giving it back to them as soon as the debt is paid off, or waiting to set aside enough to either have a hefty down payment or…dare I say it? Buy a car CASH???
The thought blows me away! I know buying cash would be just awesome but at the same time it is as though my brain cannot compute that possibility. That’s sad. I need to get to a point where financing a car seems like the absurd idea and not the other way around, right? If I save for 6 months I’d have roughly $18K. That’s certainly enough to get something reliable and with good mileage. I tell you what–one of the best things about this journey is to have OPTIONS. In the past life was about trying to figure out how I’d squeeze another monthly payment out of my monthly income and here I am with the option of saving for a pretty short amount of time and buying cash. What a luxury!
I’ve also wondered if I could just buy this little RAV4 from my parents but I think if I were to try to do that they would want to give it to me outright. I don’t want to do that for a whole host of reasons. They are elderly and with four siblings in the mix (all of whom have been helped at some point or another in life), things might get sticky. No one has said anything to me b/c I think they are all aware of the favors they’ve been granted, but I’m sensitive to minimizing family drama. Life is dramatic enough. I just don’t think my folks would take payment for the vehicle and then it would be all sorts of silliness between me and them.
Anyway, just something to think about as I pedal on to financial freedom.
