Anyone ever sold their car and done a debt "reset"?
Discussion
I'm likely going to sell my E60 535d shortly, and it's going to hurt....
I originally planned to sell it just to knock off the finance payments as we are planning to marry towards the end of the year. It's not a lot, in fact £3700 on a £9500 car, but the wedding will mean paying out a grand a month for the next 6 months, so every little helps.
But that got me thinking. Why not go the whole hog and knock off the couple of hundred quid a month credit card bills too and then that little bit of finance added to that is putting £350 towards those wedding costs.
My fear in this situation is that I'll find it hard to get back to a decent car again once it's sold and the money gone etc, but for now I could smoke around in a 3.0 X-type or a similar A4 Quattro. The silly thing is though, I've practically doubled the wages I earned 12 months ago by moving into contracting, so a part of me is geekily excited by all this, and harbouring a bit of a desire to just carry on banging the grand a month away after the wedding's paid for, and in the long run come out of this with no debt AND a better car.
Am I being daft? I COULD do the wedding etc. without going to these lengths, but it feels silly to do so when I could make life so much easier.
I originally planned to sell it just to knock off the finance payments as we are planning to marry towards the end of the year. It's not a lot, in fact £3700 on a £9500 car, but the wedding will mean paying out a grand a month for the next 6 months, so every little helps.
But that got me thinking. Why not go the whole hog and knock off the couple of hundred quid a month credit card bills too and then that little bit of finance added to that is putting £350 towards those wedding costs.
My fear in this situation is that I'll find it hard to get back to a decent car again once it's sold and the money gone etc, but for now I could smoke around in a 3.0 X-type or a similar A4 Quattro. The silly thing is though, I've practically doubled the wages I earned 12 months ago by moving into contracting, so a part of me is geekily excited by all this, and harbouring a bit of a desire to just carry on banging the grand a month away after the wedding's paid for, and in the long run come out of this with no debt AND a better car.
Am I being daft? I COULD do the wedding etc. without going to these lengths, but it feels silly to do so when I could make life so much easier.
You mention credit card repayments, depends what the interest rate is, if you can shift it to a 0% deal there's not really much point paying it off, on the other hand if you're currently paying 20% interest get rid of asap. you could always use finance to get a better car again later if you really want.
funkyrobot said:
Why not save some money on the wedding?
You're not married are you? RizzoTheRat said:
You're not married are you?
That's the thing, you see. My credit used to be terrible. No CCJ's etc. but when I was younger I had a tendency to miss payments, with no idea just how badly that would affect me years later. The last couple of years have been about repairing that damage, and everything is in decent shape now, with a good 2 years plus of meticulous organisation helping fix things up. Unfortunately, it's still only higher interest Cards that I have access to, so the majority of my bills are interest. It passes me off to be perfectly honest, but it's of my own making.
I do, however, have a choice on whether to pay this rubbish off or keep giving them my money.
£6k is a bit of a bargain for a wedding these days - my wife tells me ours cost £7k and was very modest, and that's Women maths, the true cost I suspect was closer to 9k.
As for the original question, no, I wish we could - we're doing it slowly, for the first few years we were together we bought a couple of big ticket (to us) things on HP, then refinanced so of it onto a very low interest loan, then some other things happened, we never ran out of money or over stretched ourselves or anything like that, but there was the odd few things that we were paying for longer than we had them - a Car and a Bike of mine specifically and it started getting on my nerves - as does the fact that our rent is only 10% of our take-home income, we're both working full time with good jobs but we're still struggling to get together the money to buy our own place - we could have done it by now if it wasn't for the wedding, but that's an issue for the Marriage Counsellor to try to get over in years to come
. I've put my foot down for the first time in our relationship - no more debt, ever - mortgage notwithstanding.
I'm of the opinion at the moment that nice things are nice, but I prefer to have less nice things and more lifestyle with savings. My Best friend has just bought a B7 RS4 Avant for £20k which I'm intensely envious of, but not nearly enough to even add up the cost for me to have one, let alone run it.
As for the original question, no, I wish we could - we're doing it slowly, for the first few years we were together we bought a couple of big ticket (to us) things on HP, then refinanced so of it onto a very low interest loan, then some other things happened, we never ran out of money or over stretched ourselves or anything like that, but there was the odd few things that we were paying for longer than we had them - a Car and a Bike of mine specifically and it started getting on my nerves - as does the fact that our rent is only 10% of our take-home income, we're both working full time with good jobs but we're still struggling to get together the money to buy our own place - we could have done it by now if it wasn't for the wedding, but that's an issue for the Marriage Counsellor to try to get over in years to come
. I've put my foot down for the first time in our relationship - no more debt, ever - mortgage notwithstanding. I'm of the opinion at the moment that nice things are nice, but I prefer to have less nice things and more lifestyle with savings. My Best friend has just bought a B7 RS4 Avant for £20k which I'm intensely envious of, but not nearly enough to even add up the cost for me to have one, let alone run it.
TroubledSoul said:
RizzoTheRat said:
You're not married are you?
That's the thing, you see. My credit used to be terrible. No CCJ's etc. but when I was younger I had a tendency to miss payments, with no idea just how badly that would affect me years later. The last couple of years have been about repairing that damage, and everything is in decent shape now, with a good 2 years plus of meticulous organisation helping fix things up. Unfortunately, it's still only higher interest Cards that I have access to, so the majority of my bills are interest. It passes me off to be perfectly honest, but it's of my own making.
I do, however, have a choice on whether to pay this rubbish off or keep giving them my money.
Agreed, credit cards can be great but you need to accept that stuff you're buying costs more than the sticker price. If you're happy to pay £120 for a £100 item because you want it now then go with the credit card, personally I'd rather save up and buy it next year for £50 on sale but accept different people have different priorities.
Also worth thinking about what happens after the wedding, if you're not already living together then there's potential expense there, and if you're thinking of having kids in the next few years you may want to save us some cash reserves for the time your wife won't be working. However on the other hand if you don't have any loans or credit cards at all you won't improve your credit rating which could a problem when you don want a loan or mortgage.
I was lucky in that it turned out that the in the 13 years I was with my Mrs before I proposed her parents had been saving up in the hope of a wedding Oh and congratulations on the forthcoming wedding by the way.
Also worth thinking about what happens after the wedding, if you're not already living together then there's potential expense there, and if you're thinking of having kids in the next few years you may want to save us some cash reserves for the time your wife won't be working. However on the other hand if you don't have any loans or credit cards at all you won't improve your credit rating which could a problem when you don want a loan or mortgage.
I was lucky in that it turned out that the in the 13 years I was with my Mrs before I proposed her parents had been saving up in the hope of a wedding
Oh and congratulations on the forthcoming wedding by the way.RizzoTheRat said:
You mention credit card repayments, depends what the interest rate is, if you can shift it to a 0% deal there's not really much point paying it off, on the other hand if you're currently paying 20% interest get rid of asap. you could always use finance to get a better car again later if you really want.
Not yet, no. funkyrobot said:
Why not save some money on the wedding?
You're not married are you? 
funkyrobot said:
Really?
I guess it's personal choice, but we costed ours up a few years ago and it was about half that.
It's actually mainly the venue. We are even having it on a Sunday in October as they give 15% discount on food and drinks packages etc! I guess it's personal choice, but we costed ours up a few years ago and it was about half that.
My wife to be is only going to spend a few hundred quid on a dress.
Like I say, we aren't skint, I'm just paying out more than I'm happy with and fancy starting again with nothing on any kind of credit.
TroubledSoul said:
funkyrobot said:
Really?
I guess it's personal choice, but we costed ours up a few years ago and it was about half that.
It's actually mainly the venue. We are even having it on a Sunday in October as they give 15% discount on food and drinks packages etc! I guess it's personal choice, but we costed ours up a few years ago and it was about half that.
My wife to be is only going to spend a few hundred quid on a dress.
Like I say, we aren't skint, I'm just paying out more than I'm happy with and fancy starting again with nothing on any kind of credit.
TroubledSoul said:
My wife to be is only going to spend a few hundred quid on a dress.
Ahhh bless.Here's what will happen: Darling, I've found the perfect dress shop, they have some reasonably priced dresses and as we're getting married in Oct they'll be 'out of season' and much cheaper - £500 tops.
Darling, I've found the perfect dress - oh I love it, I don't think I could get married without it - it's a tiny bit more than I thought it would be, it's £700, but it's the shop model and last years so that's half price - I've actually saved us £700!
Darling - I'm so upset, the shop dress has a few marks on it, they should be fine after a clean - £200, but it's a bit of a gamble.
Darling, I've spoke to them, they'll let me have a new one for £1000, I think that's a better bet than spending £900 on the grubby one and a clean, and it'll be perfect.
All the while the girls in the dress shop are saying "oh, don't tell him, it's YOUR day and a bride is meant to have her secrets".
And finally, many weeks after the point of no return, you'll spot a bill - Wedding Dress - £1200, Box £100, Alterations £1500. total £1450.
Do you know who started the tradition of the Groom not seeing the dress before the wedding? Wedding Dress Shops - because they know Men would see through their bulls
t - and ask yourself this, if you wanted to buy anything, would you buy it from a business that can run profitably when it completely devoid of customers 90% of the working day!P-Jay said:
funkyrobot said:
Tell them it isn't a wedding. That will wipe 50% off the price straight away.
Ain't that the truth!I left it a couple of months and approached them asking for their best price to bolt on a wedding ceremony as an alternative to a registry office. It was very competitive and after a bit of negotiation we had a wedding and meal afterwards at the venue and much less than if we had gone in asking for a wedding from the off.
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