Dear Bob:

Don't feel too bad. It could be worse.

There is a woman in my office who used to drive an Audi A6 because it is a fashionable and sporty and trendy. Nice cherry red car. She could not afford a new one so she got one used a year or so back. Luckily, it came with a warranty where if anything would break, they would fix it.

As the story goes, this car would have one or two 'big' things happen every month. This would fail, that would fail, this would fall off, that would leak, etc. She couldn't really claim it was a lemon because they were all different things everytime.

She bought it for $30k and the car's warranty would run out in Nov (2003) so she decided to get rid of it somehow before then since there was no sign the repairs will end. She went back to the dealer who sold her the car initially. They would only give her $8k. Some resale huh? She protested that identical used cars for sale in the dealers lot were still going for mid- $20's. I think they were going to give her more if she got another Audi. She said no and left.

She ended up with a Honda CRV. The honda dealer rolled over her giant negative equity into the CRV loan. Monthly= $850 for a CRV! She is basically still paying for the AUDI.

I can do a lot with $850 a month and so can you. Count your blessings and move on!

So far, this forum has saved me a few hundred clams already. Thanks guys. I look forward to the area GTG whenever that is.

Jen

PS. I am sure you guys know of many similar stories like this. It is entertaining to see people make really really bad financial commitments in the name of looking "good and trendy". I figure that I will just continue to plug money into my conservative mutual fund every month and someday not have to work so much in the future.

__________________
Jennifer
90 350sdl