Risky Borrowers Are Falling Behind on Car Payments

[Claire Oh Nette]

13. Financial illiteracy, likely...

How much is the car?

How much can you afford?

How much is the car?

What were you looking to spend a month?

How much for this car?

What kind of monthly budget did yo have to work with?

I'll ask you one more time, then I'll take my business elsewhere. How much is this car?

How much are you looking to finance?

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That's one of the actual conversations I had with a dealer on a year old, lease return, '94 Passat I bought myself in '95 for my 29th birthday. Loved that car. Didn't need their financing. Had a tough time ever getting a price. Did my research then, an dit's even easier now to determine a car's value. Plenty of people would have answered, "$250, $350 a month, and then gotten that payment, at 12% over seven years. That payment will likely wind up just above whatever amount the buyer was comfortable with, too.

Guessing a lot of folks with their $70,000 crew cab trucks are paying rent. No garage in which to put that fancy new truck. Backwards. A truck's a truck's a truck.

When I heard they were packaging sub prime auto loans and selling them as investments, I knew the whole market was a scam. Way more people have shitty car loans than had shitty home loans. Seems like the Investor class is just a fancy name for unethical cheats.