Blogging Away Debt

The Little Box That Disables Your Car if You Miss a Payment

I saw this story on Yahoo today about a little box that some subprime borrowers are getting installed on used cars that they purchase:

When the light starts to flash, you had better have the cash.
That’s the reality for millions of subprime borrowers whose used car purchase is contingent upon having an unusual option: a little box mounted underneath the dashboard that forces them to make their payments on time.
[Via Yahoo.com]

If you don’t pay…your car gets shut off and won’t start. The only way to get it back is to make your payment and receive a special code. If you don’t pay, then the repo man comes for a visit.

I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing. When my husband and I bought our first vehicle together, our credit wasn’t that great at the time but we did end up getting a loan with the help of a co-signer. If we had the option of having one of those boxes instead of having a co-signer, I would have gone for the box.

What about you? What do you think of the boxes?

There Is a Delay in Processing Your Tax Return

by Tricia

Our state tax return arrived via direct deposit a little bit ago. I’ve been anxiously awaiting our federal refund because we would break below the $13,000 mark with that money. Unfortunately, our tax refund has been delayed and I don’t know why.

I’m on hold with the IRS right now and my wait time is estimated at 20 minutes. At least they have classical music playing, although it’s a bit too loud. You also have those moments where something sounds different and you think you are being transferred to a representative but it’s only that voice that comes on to let you know that everyone is still busy.

I’ve searched the internet for the code that they gave me to try to find more information as to why our return is delayed. After quite a few misses (mostly from Yahoo answers), I found a great resource that hopefully none of you will need. The IRS has a page that lists all of the reference codes for internet filers. My code is listed, but the status description is greek to me so that’s why I’m on hold right now.

I learned about our refund being delayed this weekend. It put a bit of a damper on things since I did already “spend” the refund in my mind to go towards our debt. I can be impatient at times when it comes to paying off our debt.

This reminds me of another year where our refund was delayed. We were all set to move to where we are now and the move depended on our tax return to be able to pay for somewhere to rent once we got here. Well, the tax return didn’t arrive and it was delayed. There was no way we were delaying our move, so we headed to the bank and practically begged for a $1,000 loan. We did get the loan and ended up moving on time. A few weeks later, we finally received our tax return and turned around and paid the loan.

Comparing that situation makes this delay seem pretty trivial. We are not relying on this money for anything other than an extra payment towards our debt. Instead of being bummed, I should be thankful. I feel better about this already. We may not hit below the $13,000 mark in March, but we’ll hit it in April 🙂