This is such a good article. We bought a car almost two years ago - used, nothing special and it really wasn't that much. Everything that we could do wrong we did and the dealer took full advantage of our stupidity and, excuse my wording, screwed us over big time! We got put into a poor credit loan when we didn't have poor credit. The car had some work done by the dealer and it pretty much ruined the engine. I'm now in an upside down loan with a car that we will probably need to buy a new engine for! My choices are at this time is go get a new loan and tack on the old loan. Or park the car (while leaving it insured enough for my car loan) until we pay the thing down to what it is worth - currently it isn't much as it isn't running! Right now it is parked and we're down to one car which isn't much either! But it runs and we never made payments on it. I am of course worried about winter coming -- my car was the winter car.

Anyway, if you're looking into buying a car read over this article first -- I know next time around we're going to do things differently

The real reason you're broke - MSN Money

Who wrote about me????

Yup, I did EVERYTHING wrong. At least I got a good interest rate!

I bought a perfectly good little Saturn SL1, used, $9k. My payments were all of $125 a month or something.

So I traded it in for a brand new, decked out truck. I rolled over $4k, and my loan was about $30k. For 6 years. I'm on my 4th year now. I have no job (medical/pregnancy). My payoff ($11k+)BARELY is around what the Blue Book value is - hopefully I'll get it, or close. Those $415 payments hurt, plus the $400+ a month in gas. That and insurance was half my income back when I did have a job.

We are getting a grant for some forestry work, and DH is using a small portion of it (~$2k) to get me a used Cherokee or Jimmy (no plowing here, can't get around in a car/low vehicle in the winter).

I've never used a credit card again after screwing up 6 years ago, and I'm never getting a car loan again.