Thinking of dumping my car, maybe.

[rwmorrisonjr]

Okay, I posted here earlier about paying off debt and that has worked well to this point. Now that I'm moving down that road I'm thinking about other ways to cut costs and the next major obvious thing is my car.

As you can tell by my sig, I have two vehicles, a Bronco II and a Crown Vic. Obviously I own the BII and owe on the CV. The first option is that I could sell the CV, get a loan for the negative equity and then drive the BII. But then I'm driving a 23 year old truck that, while I have done work to it, might prove to be somewhat unreliable, especially in the summer with vapor lock issues, and might need a new engine in the near future.

The second option is to trade the CV in on a Tacoma or similar and possibly lease it to eat up the negative equity. I'd also probably sell the BII to lower my insurance costs and be back to one good reliable vehicle that does what I want it to do lifestyle wise. This only works if all the numbers work out and is within my budget.

The third option is to do nothing and keep both vehicles as is.

While I like my current car and enjoy wrenching on the BII, it would be nice to downsize into one vehicle that I could use both on and off road as well as not need to use premium gas (CV). However, I'm guessing that the single payment on a replacement vehicle will be higher than what I'm currently paying, even if its for a vehicle with a better resale value. I'm going to meet with the dealer next week and see if the numbers work out.

Please chime in with your thoughts, opinions and alternative suggestions.

[Hypoid]

My sense of thrift says to keep the older vehicle: It's paid off and parts should be cheaper, with broader aftermarket support. I don't know about the sedan. I prefer a comfy ride my-self, one more reason I keep the old wagon.

At your age, with a clean MVR, liablilty insurance should be pretty cheap. Think about comparison shopping there. We have Shelter Insurance, no incentive to go elswhere.

[rwmorrisonjr]

I also prefer a comfy ride, and the BII is supposed to be a project/trail rig, not a DD like this winter has forced upon it. I just ran insurnace numbers on a Tacoma and they're higher for it than my current 2-car premium, probably due to the risk category and newer vehicle.

[Walking Eagle]

Selling the BII will have little impact on your insurance rates. Off the top of my head, I think I pay $30/month for each of my older vehicles, the CJ7 and Bronco.

You mention also about downsizing into one vehicle for on and off road. Again this will depend on how serious off road you go, because if you damage the vehicle on the weekend, do you have alternative plans to get to work on Monday morning?

Things to consider.

[thesoundmaster]

i say keep them both, here's why, the CV still has value, the BII has almost none (in comparison). Keep the CV, park it, pay it off ASAP, cancel the insurance on it till the winter is over. That way you only have the insurance on the BII and a payment on the CV. Summer comes around and you may be- A. in a great place financially and can sell the CV off and find something else for a DD, or B. in a bad place financially say an act of God and you get laid off, you still have the paid off CV to sell for extra cash and the BII is cheap to find parts for if God forbid something happened. I say scrap selling them both off for a Tacoma or like simply because of what you said the premium was. I wish i was in a place to have two vehicles to be honest. Thats my :twocents:

[JuBean]

How much commuting do you HAVE to do? Say you like to drive up to Fort Collins twice a week to go bowling; things liek that can be cut out to make daily driving the bronco more reasonable. If the only place you really have to drive to is work and that is not very far I would be all in favor of the BII. If it really has that big of an issue with vapor lock in the summer it will be a horible project/toy to play with up in the mountains.

If you do sell the Vic are you simply going to replace it one or two years down the road with another car? If so then it is really almost pointless to get rid of it now.

[RevT]

Please chime in with your thoughts, opinions and alternative suggestions.
Coming from someone who has some neg equity in vehicles, I think it will be hard to sell the CV and get a loan for the neg part. You said you had 600/month now that debt is paid off is this still the case? Thats your loan payment that you would get to pay off the neg equity. Did you pay off the other stuff like you said? Here's what I would do.

You need something reliable, you have two options.

1. Keep both, make normal payments to CV + dump extra 600 bucks/month towards the CV to pay it off. (this wont be over night). How much can you possibly have left on it? Do they even still make those? LOL

2. Keep BII, Make normal payments to CV + dump 600/month on it till the neg equity is down. How much neg equity can you have there? 3-5 grand I'm guessing. Then sell it out right. Save up for a few months then go buy something used outright. I'm an advocate for Honda Accords. They are very reliable, usually run for 300K miles, and can be bought used for cheap. I think a 95 goes for like 2-3K. Parts are readily available in junk yards. I had an 88 accord I sold for 500 bucks, with 240K miles on it, still getting 36 mpg in it.

Either option is going to take time, and you will have to be disciplined with the money to make it work. Let us know what you decide to do.

RevT

[84broncoII]

I say keep both and buy another BII for cheep and between the three vehicals you should be able to keep one running all the time and in an extreem case rape parts off of one BII to keep the other running
You probably cant drop the insurance on the cv if your still making payments on it so maby consider getting a broadform policy with full coverage on the cv Or maby sell the cv and buy three BII"s and you know you can keep one running all the time if you have three the parts are cheep anywhay?which reminds Me I broke the universal joint on the passenger front of the trail rig and i need to go to the bone yard and dig up another 35$ Bone : )

[84broncoII]

This way you have three BII's one for the street one for the trail and one duel purpose rig for taking long drives and then beating it up on the trail too .and if you find a girl that doesn't have a car .you have an extra one and you guys can go 4 wheeling together and have little 4wheel children and live happily ever after the end

[rwmorrisonjr]

84, LOL!!!

I can't cancel the insurance on the CV since its financed. However, I can drop my coverage limits to the lowest possible and save about $200/year on coverage, plus the premiums keep dropping over time as the cars age.

For my commute, I drive from SE Aurora to downtown and back every day. No commutes to Ft. Collins or the Springs regularly, so long trips aren't an issue right now. However I am worried about the engine as I don't know how it was maintained prior to me buying 18 months ago. Its okay if I run it occasionally, but I don't want to rely on it until I get enough cash together to replace it. As for vapor lock, I think the issue has been solved with a new electric pump and resetting the timing to the correct range; I had it way too advanced and that was causing a lot of problems.

I've been running the numbers and I don't think they're going to go anywhere but up due to the negative equity. Although getting a 1-for-2 repolacement vehicle sounds nice in theory, in practice its going to be a bad move financially. And even though I don't do hardcore wheeling, JuBean does have a point about potential damage & downtime with a single vehicle.

Rev, the extra money that was going to go toward the CCs originally disappeared when my wife left, so paying off the CCs allowed me to get back to a zero position again. And I still have one payment left that I'm going to hammer on first and get it dumped before I deal with the car more aggressively.

So after running the numbers and doing some thinking on this I'm going to stay in the position I'm in and let my finances settle out until after the divorce is finanized. After that I can reassess my position and see if things are going the right way or if I need to revisit these choices again.

Thanks for your thoughts and opinions, they were a big help with my decision.

[RayLCC]

One other option you might think of for commuting is RTD. There should be several options to get you from aurora into downtown and it may be easier than you think. I live in north denver and the 52 picks me up two blocks away from my house and drops me off right in front of my building. (17th and Lawrence) Once you factor in gas, paying for parking ect. its worth it to hop the bus even if you own a car. Its especially good when it snows, since you don't have to worry about someone running into your car. Just a thought. Personally, taking the bus has allowed me to take what would normally be my "daily driver" and turn it into a project vehicle to get it how I want it. If I had to use it to get to work I wouldn't have been able to have it sit for this long.