Since business slowed down in the mortgage industry, my paychecks diminished, leaving me to exhaust my cash reserves and use it to live on and make my monthly payments. Everything from the house payment, credit cards, utilities, cell phone, cable/internet, negative cashflow on rental properties, etc….so why not be late on my car payments as well?!
My credit is already demolished, so what good would timely car payments be?
With that rationale, I stopped payments on my car. That’s over $500 a month that I don’t have to put out and can use for groceries.
Here’s the other side to that. Stopping car payments meant that at some point the repo man will pay a visit.
I’m pretty sure that they tried searching for us after about the 4th month (maybe sooner), but we had about 3 addresses that they would have to search on a daily basis, including a secured garage at one location and a padlocked one car garage out of a possible 5 garages that they would have to guess which one belonged to us.
I could’ve hung on to this car longer and just driven it “payment-free” for a few months longer, but other issues come along with that.
One main issue is, knowing that I would voluntarily return the car to the bank at some point, why continue to pay for the car insurance? That’s another $150 a month that I could keep in my pocket each month (well, not really, because I haven’t seen a paycheck in a while).
These are things that probably millions of other foreclosure victims are most likely going through as well.
Without insurance, I didn’t feel comfortable to drive, so my wife and I have been walking everywhere. The good news is, we’re within 15 minutes of everything that we need to survive. Grocery stores, theaters, bookstores, shopping, parks, etc…
We only took the car out sparingly to go grocery shopping (heavy stuff like water and milk and canned goods) since the insurance was cancelled on it.
I also took the car out when I had a couple of job interviews as well.
Despite our massive perfect storm that we’re currently living in, the good Lord is watching over us. I mean that sincerely.
My parents, who are retired and living on social security and pension and can barely afford to live in todays world, came to our rescue about 3 weeks ago and offered their 2nd car to us for however long we need to use it, and gave us enough money to pay for a months rent and some food.
God bless them. I know they don’t have much money, because I did their refinance 2 years ago, with some cashout, and I know that they went through the money already. So, where they got the money they gave us, I don’t know. Maybe they borrowed it from credit cards. Knowing mom, I bet that’s what she did.
I’ll get the money back to them as soon as I can (with massive interest as well).
So, having been given my parents 2nd car (free and clear of any car loan), my wife and I are at a little bit of ease. We can do our grocery shopping at anytime of the day and not have to worry about not having car insurance and not being followed by the repo man.
To recap, defaulting on your mortgage, means defaulting on credit cards, utilities, cell phone bills, cable/internet, car payments, car insurance, medical insurance (which I also recently canceled due to being a victim of the mortgage crisis also), and a bunch of other things that aren’t coming to mind just yet.
In any event, it was a nice luxury sports car that I do miss…but I won’t miss that payment. R.I.P. luxury sports car…
