Debt $ense

The director of my company site issued an open call for ideas for 2007 - new products, ways to better sell existing products, and improvements to existing products. The deadline’s tomorrow, and apparently as of yesterday, I was the only one to suggest anything substantive. He’s asked me to present my ideas to the site directors (him, plus each department head) during one of their regular meetings next week. And I’ve gotten rumblings from an inside source that he’s looking for a way to move me into a larger role in the organization. (Yes, that would come with a pay increase.)

Lots of things are in flux, and he isn’t the final say, but right now it’s looking like I could be in much better financial shape by this time next year - even after replacing my car. While a bit of that would go toward loosening up my budget - $80 every two weeks for everything that’s not a monthly bill is cutting it pretty close to the bone - most of it would help with CC repayment (if that hasn’t been accomplished) and then be put into savings once the debt’s gone.

I won’t know anything for sure any time soon, but I could get a better picture by mid-October.

I had to renew my car registration this morning, and the Hyundai dealership is two lots down, so I stopped by to do some research. Fortunately, I got a salesman who’s related to one of my co-workers, so there was no pressure and he went out of his way to be helpful. So I had a chance to sit in the model I want, get a good look at the features and figure out which trim I like the best.

The car replacement is still a few months a way — knock on wood — but I have a better idea of what I want and now have the name of a salesman who I can trust. (Why? Because his S-I-L is a formidable woman and she wouldn’t take it well if I got hosed.) He even suggested I sell my car on my own to one of the newspaper carriers rather than trade it in. Apparently it’s a popular car because it’s a gas-sipper and fairly inexpensive to maintain. He estimated I could get $1,500 to $2,000 for it. I’d probably go for the lower end of that - it would still be three times more than I would get as a trade-in and it would likely go quicker. So I’m estimating I can get $1,000, to allow for negotiating room. That, plus savings based on my current rate of pay, mean I would have about $6,000 for a downpayment by this time next year, when they’re trying to get rid of the 2007 models as the 2008 come in. And, of course, by then there should be several leased models back on the lot as used, which greatly increases my options.

(If you’re wondering why I would consider new, basically it would only happen if between year-end incentives and the owner loyalty discount, I could get a comparable deal to a used one. New also comes with the full warranty, whereas used only gets part of it.)

The really nice part about the car - a Hyundai Tucson, for the curious - is that the rear seats and the front passenger seat fold flat to allow for carrying some pretty good-sized items in a small SUV. As somebody who lives alone and far from the family members with minivans, this is a good thing. It also means I won’t have an excuse anymore to leave stuff at my parents’ house. Guess that childhood closet will finally get cleaned out…

I was driving home from a weekend trip to visit a friend (and help her rip out linoleum) when my check engine light came on. Not the occasional flicker, or the thing where it randomly comes on and my mechanic can’t figure out why. This was the “blink three times then stay on” that means something major. Unfortunately, I was about two hours from home, so I just kept my speed down and kept going.

I’ve been having issues with the car refusing to shift out of Park when I turn it on. It’s an automatic transmission and I’ve been having trouble getting the button to depress so I can shift into reverse or drive. So when the light went on and the car was jerking at highway speed, you can imagine what my first thought was.

Turns out it was just a misfiring cylinder and new plugs and wires fixed it. But it was 24 hours before I knew that, and in the meantime I was trying to figure out at what point it wasn’t worth fixing a car worth less than $1,000 and how I would come up with a downpayment if I did have to replace it.

So - lesson learned - I’m cutting back my weekly CC payments a bit and sticking about $250 a month ($65/week, to be precise) into an ING Direct account, which I’ll start in a couple of weeks when I have the $250 stashed for a referral bonus. It will prolong my CC debt, but if I don’t have money stashed, the downpayment would have to go on my card, which also would prolong it. And if I get close to the end and the car’s running well, I can make a big lump-sum payment from that fund to kill it for good, then rebuild my fund with the money no longer going toward debt.