Tips on Buying Cars: 10K upside down, acrua tl, lowest possible price

Question
I own a 08 Acrua TL, I traded in a 04 Nissan Titan. My company requires us as sales reps to trade every three years. With the Titan I was around $12K upside down so I put down 6K and purchased the Acura in hopes it would hold its value better and rolled over the other $6k in the Acura. After owning it for 8 months I cant stand a car and the biggest picture is after insurance I am paying close to 1K a month for this car. I am looking for some kind of help to figure out a way to get out of this awful situation I have put myself in.

My question is would it make any sense to trade for a $25,000 new truck with like a $3-4K rebate and put $2000 more down and trade this car in on a cheaper truck? In theory this could put me only $4k upside down but I don't know if I am missing something besides all the sales tax and depreciation of the Acura. Any help? Thanks Eric


Answer
Eric,

You are on target if you want to get out of the Acrua. Find a vehicle with a big rebate on it. Negotiate the lowest possible price on the new vehicle and the highest amount for trade in on your Acrua. If you can put a bit more than $2K down that would be even better. The rebate will help eat the negative equity as well as the money you put down. If you can negotiate a good deal on the car your buying that will help a bit. The problem is your in a situation that you have negative equity and barring a miracle with $10K in negative equity your going to end up in the same situation on the new vehicle. So if you can make it work and you are required to trade every three years then you need to save some money between this new vehicle and the next. That way you can get a clean break. I would also look into leasing because at trading every 3 years this might be more beneficial to you.

As far as your though process on how to get out of the Acrua your are spot on. Good luck and feel free to ask me any other questions you may have.

Brad
http://www.buyingacar101.com