# Car Loan



## LM26 (27 May 2009)

My husband and I have a car each. My husband is trying to shift his as he pays €300 a month repaying the loan.

Problem is the car market has obviously taken a nose dive and the car is valued at approx 9k with an outstanding loan balance of 13k.

I presume we have no sensible option but to hold onto car? My car is prob worth about 3-4k, which I will pay off by November 09.

The plan had been to sell my husbands car (he was willing to take a hit but not as big as 4k) and then aim at clearing the balance and having no car loans asap.

Does anyone have any advice - would it be a good idea to sell my car (I use it rarely) even though the loan repayments are almost up but it would mean that there would be no running costs to pay i.e. tax,insurance etc. Or would this be a bit pointless in overall scheme of things?

Sorry for rambling, would welcome any feedback.


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## cancan (27 May 2009)

By keeping your husbands car you owe 13k.
By selling it you owe 4k.

2 cars are not needed, and both are only going to fall in price for the future.

Is the usage from your husbands car worth 9k?

Save up the 4k to clear the loan, sell the husbands car, use yours, and enjoy having a hefty debt burden lifted off you.

This debt will have to be paid at some point, may as well do it now.

The alternative is to spend the next 4 years paying off a car that will be ~worthless by then, which you prob don't even need.


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## LM26 (28 May 2009)

Thanks for the advice, very helpful. We normally travel by car together to work but he is changing jobs soon so Im going to look into cost of public (pubic to some) transport and weigh it all up. Thanks!

In terms of selling the car, our friend has recently started working at a car auction and says it is going quite well so we hope to shift it there if we do sell, but yes I appreciate that it may be difficult to sell, even at that price of 9k.


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## Mumha (28 May 2009)

LM26 said:


> Thanks for the advice, very helpful. We normally travel by car together to work but he is changing jobs soon so Im going to look into cost of public (pubic to some) transport and weigh it all up. Thanks!
> 
> In terms of selling the car, our friend has recently started working at a car auction and says it is going quite well so we hope to shift it there if we do sell, but yes I appreciate that it may be difficult to sell, even at that price of 9k.


 
I would add that he could always pick up a little run-around for €1,000 or less. People can't give these cars away.


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## so-crates (31 May 2009)

LM26 said:


> ...so Im going to look into cost of public (pubic to some) transport and weigh it all up. Thanks!


 
Just to remind you that there is the taxsaver scheme for commuters, check if your company is part of it as it does save quite a large chunk of money on the cost of transport for Luas, buses, trains. If you are unfamiliar with it basically you have the option of getting tickets monthly or yearly (the yearly is typically the cost of ten months). Your company buys the tickets on your behalf and deducts the cost of the ticket from your gross income before tax is calculated, so basically you get an effective reduction of your tax and PRSI, it can save you quite a bit of money.


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