I got a happy call today from my boss. I was nominated for an award at work for being a stellar brownie. It was approved by upper management and I’ll be receiving $1500.00 on my next paycheck. After taxes and 401k deductions, I should end up with about $800-900.
The question for you is:
Should I snowflake my credit cards or save this money for a car?
Points to consider:
1. My emergency fund has been laid to waste. So I have no savings at all. If I forgo the car for another 6 months, the savings will restart my emergency fund.
2. Once my renter is in my condo, I will easily get back on track to pay off all my credit cards this year and meet my primary goal for 2009.
3. I don’t need a car. I want that car. (And yes Reader Nicole, it is a Subaru WRX STi I have in mind, but I have not ruled out a new VW GTI till I can test drive the 2010’s.)
I’m inclined right now to snowflake and finally kill off all my stupid consumer debt.
HALP! I’m suffering from an embarassment of riches today. (In a good way!)
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
I see you changed your RSS settings so that one has to click through to read the posts. That’s a bummer.
Congrats! My thoughts:
If you literally have 0 in savings, put all of it in savings.
If you have at least 1,000 in savings, then put all of it toward the debt. The sooner that’s paid off, the sooner you can get your savings account filled up. That will help you sleep a lot better than a shiny car will!
Yay! You are so right not buying used. We made that mistake and the car never ran quite right.
Be very careful, the 2005s were very loud and uncomfortable for a long commute (seemed to be worse at slow speeds).
I vote for killing the debt some more, and keeping a little back for savings. Then use the rental income for your car.
Pay off the debt. Pay off the debt. Did I mention pay off the debt. Then, snowflake your savings slowly up for the car that you would have used for the debt. I have the same problem with my emergency funds, I wrote a piece on it recently how I don’t know what to use it on. Good work and love the site. NeworthIQ is banging!
Credit cards. Or the emergency fund. Your car fund will get there eventually.
The model sold in Australia at least is just under 300HP (221kW). That confused me. Price is $A60k and uses more fuel than a new Ford Falcon (we have a 2004 Ford Falcon).
You know the answer MapGirl – pay down the debt, it is going to be gone by the end of the year anyway. This will put your money to work for you a little bit better.
Imagine how nice that new ride will be, when you can keep it on the road, with no debt to keep you home.
I agree with others — pay off debt or stash into savings. It’s more important to have that basis in case something happens to disrupt your well-laid plans.
Also, I second the sadness about the RSS feed change.
Congratulations on your award! Well done.
Restart your emergency fund.
Meadow
Pay off the debt.. no brainer. you dont need the new car, you want it but you can make do after your emergency saving fund is built up