We’ve had a lot of experience with loans lately thanks to the debt we seem to be accumulating. When we bought our home, we had to get a mortgage loan. Now that we’re looking into getting a new-to-us family car, we could either get a car loan through our local credit union or look into collateral loans.
While we spent the past 5 years pretty much doing everything in our power to get out of debt, we have no issue with taking on this debt to achieve some of our goals. The reality is that if we emptied our savings accounts, we could afford to purchase a car in cash. But with a baby on the way, we don’t want to have an empty bank account.
Furthermore, we plan on taking a three-year loan for no more than $10K. At the same time, we’ll be saving up to get Eric a new truck as well, since his current car is a 2001. Still runs fine and we haven’t had any major issues with it, but in order for him to safely have a car seat, a truck with a backseat would be ideal.
I’ve never been one of those super hardcore debt people. I never wanted to live off ramen for a year in order to say I was debt free. We made a lot of sacrifices, but we weren’t willing to simply stop living our lives to be debt-free.
I think that when it comes to debt, we take more of a balanced approach. I absolutely don’t condone debt, and we plan to pay off our car loan as quickly as possible, but I am not willing to put ourselves into financial danger simply for the sake of saying we’re debt free except for our mortgage.
We will not take on debt to pay for fancy clothes, vacations, or other frivolous wants, but I don’t have a problem with taking on a car loan to ensure safety or to achieve our home ownership dream.
We live in a very expensive cost of living area and I think we’re doing the best we can with the resources we have.
