Congratulations. Here's to many miles of smiles.

Paul

 

Congrats on the upgrade!

That's what I want to know. My savings interest rate has fallen from 5.05 into the low 3.x%.

 

haha all the money gurus around here.

Okay the money market account makes a bit over 2%. Here's the kicker though. The investments I have my money in (and yes I COULD have simply paid cash) currently earn in the neighborhood of 7.25%. The note is 5.5% So it doesn't make sense for me to pull that money out of my investments now to pay for the whole car.

The money market account will pay for it for a little over 2 years, and in that time my investments will make more on interest than I'm paying on the note. At the end of the two years, assuming I still have the car, I'll at that time pay the note off.

 

Congrats on the Z - sounds like you cut a fat hog in the ***.

 

very cool!!! i love this picture!!

 

So, in effect, you borrowed let's say an extra $30K at 5.5% and put it in a MM paying 2% before taxes so that you would be able to automate the payments for 2 years.

If you had just said you borrowed the money at 5.5% so you could keep investments making 7.5% before taxes, that might make a little sense. I do that all the time. But why did you put it in a MM making only 2%? It looks to me as if on $30K you would be out of pocket about an extra $1,000 the first year so that you don't have to write 12 checks that would have each been much smaller than the automatic payments on the higher loan value will be. It still makes no sense at all to me. But it doesn't really matter because it's not my money. I just wanted to understand. If you're happy then we're both happy.
I never said there wasn't a sales tax advantage by trading a car rather than a private sale. In fact, I said I agreed with that. But the sales tax was never in question. My issue was borrowing $30K extra at the going car loan rate so that it could be put it in a MM. It looks like the OP is willing to pay the 3.5% penalty plus income tax rate on the MM simply so that he can automate the withdrawals and doesn't have to write a check every month to pay the loan. I thought I might be missing something.

 

United Heritage Credit Union. As far as I can tell they're Texas only. 6.01% fixed (interest paid Quarterly) to a max deposit of $25,000 then 1% on the balance over $25,000. Required: One Direct Deposit or one Direct Bill Pay and 10 Debit Card uses per month. I'm tempted to sell my few remaining stocks and put the $$ in the UHCU checking!