amalone1013
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jan 15, 2016
I'll add that we were looking at my car vs DH's, which has like a 2.5% interest rate, because I'm halfway through my loan already and paying off the balance is much more in reach than DH's since his vehicle loan is just starting.... like we need to make the 2nd payment this week just starting. So it's definitely doing more of a 'snowball' balance focused take instead of interest rate focused, which is how we tackled student loans.
We were planning to put all extra income towards the car anyways, so it would be paid off before the end of the year no matter what. So this would mostly just switch it up and yes, we'd pull around $7k from that savings goal... but then if we're throwing the extra income at that savings goal it'd be replaced in under 3 months... even less as the ILs are paying us back, plus the extra $450 to budget to that savings or other goals.I understand wanting the cash flow, but that's a big amount to pull out of a savings goal. You're just going to end up taking the same amount of time to build the savings back up as it would have taken to pay off the car at 0%. It seems like you're just missing out on interest to me.
I think paying off our student loans has lit a fire under me It's just so nice to not have those payments, and we were projecting the car to be paid off by the end of the year anyways... so why not just twist the budgeting and put the extra $$ that was going to be for that back in the down payment goal?You sound a lot like me. When I was so close to paying off our mortgage with accelerated payments, I simply took $ out of savings ahead of schedule just to have it gone. It probably didn't make financial sense because the rate on the mortgage was pretty low, but it made me so happy to pay it off that the few dollars we missed out on earning on our savings was nothing compared to the euphoria paying it off brought.
Yes, at the end of it it's under $200 in interest... Though we could put the money aside and it'd be sitting there if we ended up in a situation where we needed it gone for some reason. I'm also torn on just waiting until I'm eligible for a CIP in November and using Plastiq/the car to meet minimum spend It mostly stresses me because I haven't budgeted for an apartment/utilities since college, and the market for housing/rentals is INSANE out here so it's like going in with a $450 payment we could get rid of makes me nervous. Maybe I'll just funnel everything into a separate Ally account until the CIP idea at least...I'm not a fine-tuned budgeter, but maybe put the car funds in a separate savings account and leave them out of the regular budgeting? On the other hand, it's not a huge amount in interest that you'd be losing, so if it's causing you stress, maybe just go ahead and pay it.