Years ago the bank made a typo when entering my car payment into their computer. I didn't catch it for a couple of years. They sent me letters every month saying I was in arrears, which I knew I wasn't, so young, naive Perky threw the letters away. Keep in mind young, naive Perky was a little late sometimes when the due date fell before he got paid... sometimes as much as 6 days. Young, naive Perky gladly payed the penalty when that happened. Can't remember what it was... maybe 10 or 20 bucks.
When I got to the final payment the letters continued. So young Perky, who had every receipt, gathered up said receipts and went to the bank for an explanation. We discovered the problem and the bank took care of the accrued interest and penalties since it was their mistake. Not once did they ever threaten to repo the car.
Methinks that the whole story was not told.
About 10 years ago we did a very dangerous thing. We had car payments of about $700 a month for two cars with another 3 years to go on both loans. Both cars were new so we [ Gasp] borrowed the pay off from our 401k paid both cars off and with in 9 months had replaced the savings back into the 401k.
Quite a risk here but it did work for us. Today we still have the cars, we may have to put $500 a year into maintaining them, nickle dime us but taxes, registration fees, oil changes etc, they are good to go for another 5-6 years.
It is the freaking interest that gets us, it is not the total interest but the 5% added on each month that comes out to be about 60% per year or 180% interest on the loan for 3 years, just one car.
We are not taught this stuff in school, everyone gets a credit card thinking the 20% interest is just for the total bill, Not,---- the interest is per month.
So people get trapped into this by slick talking salesmen and woman and if some unforeseen emergency comes up, on a credit card bill of $3,000 paying the minimun, it may take you 15 years to pay off the bill.
I know people that do not put any money in savings, they are doubling up and tripling up on mortgage and car payments to escape the interest, get it paid off as soon as possible.
Everyone is told to have a savings account at a bank but, for the interest that you are taxed on small as it may be, in this day and age paying off homes and autos to escape the interest, using a credit card only when you can pay off the bill in 20 days is becoming a survival method.
Income tax for people that work in hour wage jobs, is a hoot, some claim 3-4 exemptions and get a good boost to their pay check. Come time to file and instead of getting $2,500 back they may have to pay in $500 or so , but they have been able to buy items or pay off bills with the extra in their pay check and not have lent $2,000 with no interest to the government.
Hard scrabble for all it seems, I remember the day we had to pay $800 to have a low jack installed in our Jeep. Now it seems the dealers are putting them in cars without telling the customer---Damn.
Strange new world for us and with all the rip offs in the business world I am not at all surprised that anyone would get a auto repoed, most are young and have no idea what they are getting into when they sign a contract that is full of legal jargon that is confusing.
