A Deadline Approaches

I’ll admit, I love my car.

When I turned 16 I didn’t have a driver’s license, let alone a car.  I didn’t need one.  Living in a small community, everywhere I needed to go was within walking distance.  On winter mornings after a snowstorm I would have to trudge two miles through the woods in knee deep snow at 6 am in the dark to get to work.  I know that sounds like one of those stories your parents used to tell you about how they had to walk 10 miles to school, uphill both ways but I’m serious.  This was just the way things were.  I never thought anything of it & looking back, I kind of miss it in some ways.

When I was 15 years old I had an old copy of Lowrider magazine and I remember admiring all of the old cars but I was especially fond of the Impala with its huge fins.  It had class & attitude.  From that point on I knew that when I did finally buy a car it was going to be an Impala.  It wasn’t until I was 23 years old that I finally decided to buy a car.

I searched the local dealerships for the car of my dreams & was lucky to find it almost immediately.  It was a 2003 Impala, not exactly the ’59 I had lusted over for all those years but still a beautiful car.  It was dark blue and had everything I wanted; a spoiler, moon roof, power everything, a CD player.  It was used but the mileage was low and the price seemed affordable.  The salesman didn’t even have to attempt to sell me the car, I was already asking where to sign.

In the excitement of the situation, I was more concerned with going for a drive than I was with the terms of the contract.  I was scratching my name there and initialing here, here and here faster than they could turn the pages.  The only thing I cared about was whether I could afford the monthly payments and sure enough, I could.  Before long I would be out on the open road enjoying my new car.

It didn’t take long to realize the power I had just bequeathed upon myself.  I could go anywhere and see anything I wanted.  All I had to do was get in & drive, and that is exactly what I did.  I drove my car all over the country.  My first trip was to Colorado for a week.  Then I drove to Niagara Falls one weekend.  Then to Washington, DC for a few days.  New York City.  California.  British Columbia.  I went everywhere in my car.  We were a match made in heaven.

As much as I love my car, stupidity nearly caused me to lose it.  In the midst of my financial meltdown I was unable to make my car payments and was being threatened with repossession.  The ticket to my freedom was in serious jeopardy of being just a memory of the “good ole days”.  Those payments that I thought I could afford looked good on paper but weren’t so realistic when I had to pay for rent, utilities, food & all the other things that I wanted in life.  Luckily I was able to fix my financial problems with a little bit of sacrifice & a lot of overtime.

In the process of overcoming my financial crisis I was learning a lot about money.  I learned about interest rates & decided to check to see what mine was on my car loan.  I was shocked at the 12.99% APR typed neatly across the loan agreement.  I pulled up my account history online and soon realized that the payments I had been making for the past two years were mostly being applied towards interest charges.  By the time I would finish paying this loan off I could have practically bought a second Impala with the money I wasted in interest charges.  Luckily I was able to refinance my loan through a local credit union at half the interest rate.

I currently have a balance of $3,670.66 and earlier this year I made a goal of having this debt paid off entirely by November 18, 2009.  With 6 weeks left to reach this deadline I am beginning to question the reality of this goal.  Is it possible?

I guess we will see on November 18th!!!