Sad... my car died

[woeisme]

Well, yesterday the car's transmission went, car just seized up and died right in the middle of a busy intersection, very scary! Luckily there was a cop right behind us who was able to stop traffic while we got the car off the road. Anyhow, towed to the shop but to get a rebuilt transmission is going to cost $800-900. It's a 99 Dodge Stratus with 150,000 miles on it, so was living on borrowed time I guess. We're really debating what to do. We have about a thousand in savings, so could fix the car, but then we are still with an old car with high miles, who's to say we won't have something else major go wrong once we fix it? But alternative is getting permission from trustee to get a new car (we have a decent amount of "wiggle room" in our budget, and if I took on just a little bit of overtime each month could afford ~$250/month payments without even changing our payments to the trustee) and then find someplace who is willing to sell us a car while in CH 13, not an easy thing I've read on this board. I had been hoping to just save up the money to get a cheap used car with cash when this one died, but was hoping it would make it for another year or so and that we'd have 4-5K saved up by the time this happened, but constant repairs of this car over the past year keep eating the nextegg whenever it gets decent, and here we go again, this repair will pretty much take everything we have in savings at the moment and we'd be back to square one. I hear scrap metal is going up in price, wonder if we could get a hundred or two for the old car...

Sorry, just venting. We also have a Ford Ranger, but doesn't fit my husband, son and I very comfortably, since we're all "amply proportioned" or in other words, fat! We'll make do with the truck though until we figure out what we want to do about the car. Word to the wise for all still in the planning stages of a CH 13, GET A NEW CAR THAT WILL LAST 5 YEARS BEFORE FILING!!! I know I sure wish I did!

[Keebler]

You're not alone...

We have exactly two vehicles for the whole family to survive with. One is fairly new with a high payment and a good sized loan balance and we decided to surrender that one.

The transmission went out of our second vehicle right after we filed.

We haven't returned the first one yet even though the bank and our attorney are getting impatient.

The one with the bad transmission is in limbo because we owe money on it at a credit union. Even if we repair it it'll cost us twice its value to keep it and that's just not smart.

We're hoping we can save up several hundred dollars in time to buy something soon because in another few weeks we'll have exactly ZERO vehicles.

[AngelinaCatHub]

I’ve said it before, Mrs. and I purchased a 92 police car with only 112k on it. Many idle minutes I’m sure. However we could have got it cheaper but it was a blind bid so we got it for 800. Next high bid, 100. Duh. But we put 200 into it and have run it fine for two years and it purrs like a kitten.

Now check Craig’s list for a used car. Don’t worry about how it looks, only if it runs well. I would not put a penny into the frozen transmission and don’t sell it to a junk yard. Sell it to a scrap metal person. Big difference in price. ‘Hub

[AngelinaCatHub]

I would rather purchase a 450 dollar car every month and get what it will give me, (transportation) than to have a 450 dollar a month debt. 'Hub

[liz417]

I would rather purchase a 450 dollar car every month and get what it will give me, (transportation) than to have a 450 dollar a month debt. 'Hub

Never thought of it that way! Good point 'Hub

[chloe0724]

This is from another post.

They said Roadloans was a company that would finace BK

There are other post-bankruptcy (and post-petition, pre-discharge) companies out there that will loan money for cars.

Basically, the Debt-To-Income ratio (DTI) is taken seriously. The more you have in income, and less you have in bills you pay (including your Chapter 13 payments, if you're in a Chapter 13), will be significant in what they'll loan you. I think the most is $25K anyhow.

[woeisme]

Sorry you're in the same shape as us Keebler. I am also one who doesn't like to have monthly payments, ACHub. That's why we have an 11 year old truck and 9 year old car I guess. I really wish we got a car with payments before filing CH 13 though, because our budget would be the same, just more money going to car and less to trustee/creditors, probably the only time in my life when it would have been good to have car payments over owning outright. My hubby decided to fix the car (it's his, the truck is mine, back from my single days when I lived in the mountains of New Mexico and liked to go 4-wheeling in the wild). His rationale is that any car we pick up for the $1000 we have on hand right now is likely to have just as many problems as the car we need to fix. I'm going to pick up overtime anyhow and aim to earn 300-400 extra each month so when we have another such problem, and I know we will, we'll be able to get something else rather than keep throwing money into the pit. Thanks for the commiseration everyone!

[Flamingo]

We went into our five year plan with 3 year old vehicles which held up well until year 3/4 of our Plan. And of course everything went at once. We used savings we were holding for car/house repairs but when another $650 repair hit on one vehicle and our water heater went at the same time and had to be replaced (labor/installation another $550), it was a dead end without help. We contacted our attorney who contacted our trustee and we were able to forego a Plan payment for one month to help cover that mess plus at that time we had started the whole process of our early buyout which still would not yet occur for another 6 months since that always takes a while and we still had to make plan payments.

What the OP needs to do in this situation is contact his attorney to see what can be done as to possibly getting another vehicle or if that is not possible to patch up this one with the savings he has in the interim and just do the best they can over the coming years. When you go into a five year plan, your vehicles either have to be newer or kept up in top notch shape during the Plan in order to make it through without any major breakdowns. Same as to one's house. It's expensive to do all that and those expenses can lead to the breakdown of a Chapter 13 with one not being able to make Plan payments when all the repairs hit.