Should I Fix Up or Trade My Old Car? | Edmunds.com


What to do when facing a high repair bill. Fixing it saves you money, but there's always that alluring new-car smell.
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What to do when facing a high repair bill. Fixing it saves you money, but there's always that alluring new-car smell.
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1. Sell my car, my motorcycle, and my wife's car, use the cash to buy a nice car for her, then finance a nice car for me. We could split the payment and keep a big chunk of money in the bank.
2. Sell my car, my motorcycle, and my wife's car, and use my savings to buy two nice cars for both of us. This would use up a lot of my savings, but we wouldn't have any car payments, and we could immediately start working on rebuilding our savings account.
3. We could continue driving our old cars until we are old and gray and the wheels fall off so we can leave a big pile of money to our kids when we die. (Our kids already make much more money than we ever have.)
I'm leaning toward going with option #1 because it allows us to get new vehicles and keep most of our savings. And if we ever got into a financial bind, we could always pay off the loan early. Plus, some car companies have 1% financing, so using their money wouldn't create much additional expense.
Luckily we take good care of our vehicles and are not in a big rush to do anything.
What is the car worth once the repairs are done vs. What is it worth now?
If the increase in value is less than the repair costs, then let it go.
Of course, that doesn't mean you have to spend $20K+ on another vehicle. Your choices are infinite, once you let it go, constrained only by your finances.
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However, I have a 72 mile round commute and the car won't last forever. I've looked at a used Prius C and Prius. We can afford them, but I really hate the idea of spending the money on anything, since I haven't had a payment in years.
Do I fix it or get something new to me?
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Sometimes putting in a quart of oil once a month isn't such a hardship--but as with any leak, you have to develop the habit of monitoring it frequently.
You might also consider a 2nd opinion on the oil leak---sounds like a rear main seal maybe?
Seems to me that if the tires are good and it's been reliable, that a $1,000 repair is worth doing. That's only going to be about 3 months new/used car payments.
Maybe, maybe you just keep driving it, and putting in oil. No way I put a $1000 repair into that car.
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Thanks for the responses.