Chances are that if you own a vehicle of any sort, you have at least thought about what would or could happen if you were to miss a payment. Too often, when we first purchase our very first vehicle, we make the mistake of purchasing a car or sport utility vehicle that we really don t need. Take my example for instance.
When I was fresh out of college, I had a leased Jeep that my father had given me while I was in college. However, the lease was only for a period of three years. At the end of the three years, I had the option of giving the vehicle back and paying a relatively small penalty of just over a thousand dollars (for going over the allotted mileage because I tended to drive a lot of long distance miles), OR I had the option to pay off whatever the remaining amount was on the vehicle that I owed. At the time when I had to make the decision to either keep this Jeep or give it back, I owed approximately $13,000 dollars or just over that amount on the vehicle (that is, if I wanted to hold onto it after the leasing agreement had expired.
If I wanted to give the vehicle back, then I would have to pay a penalty of roughly $1,500 because I went over the $36,000 miles that had been allowed for this particular leasing agreement. When it came down to deciding what I wanted to do, in a rush, I decided that I didn t want to hang onto the Jeep; I wanted something brand new. My father had already agreed to pay off the difference of what I owed the dealership for going over the miles; so now the only thing that remained was deciding on what kind of a car I wanted to get to replace my Jeep.
I briefly looked around at various dealerships and test drove a few cars. My mother had a Honda Accord, and I knew that Hondas were known for being relatively durable cars. However, my eye kept going back to other kinds of cars that were far out of my price range. Instead of doing the research and knowing all of the specs on the various kinds of cars, I, instead, was focused on thinking about what kind of a car would suit my personality at the time and what people would think of me driving around in a particular kind of vehicle. I knew that I was on my own when it came to financing the car, but after listening to various car salespeople at the dealerships and learning that my credit score was stellar, I didn t really care.
So, what did I end up purchasing as a vehicle to replace my last Jeep? Another Jeep. Yep, that s right. In a rush, I sort of ran out of time because before I knew it, it was time to give back to other Jeep. So, I would up just sticking with what I knew. What I didn t realize was that now that I was going to be paying for it out of my own pocket, perhaps it wasn t the best investment.
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