But we know only Europeans use that incorrect abbreviation of Mercedes. Allen Jackson did not sing Mercedes Blues! 
You’re so Mark Twain!
Ambulance costs vary widely depending on your political jurisdiction and in my State, the ride to the nearest hospital is “free” for Medicare and Medicaid recipients. Obviously nothing in this world is “free”, the cost is in our taxes, but we’ve made a decision that a medical emergency isn’t the best place to weigh the personal financial costs of emergency treatment. i.e If Grandpa is flopping around like a landed fish or Junior is unconscious from an accident, is that really the time to think about whether we can afford the transportation costs?
I live in York Country, Virginia, (between Hampton and Williamsburg…). In York County, the Fire Department charges for ambulance service, but the process is structured to minimize financial hardship for residents. They bill the patient’s insurance, Medicare, or Medicaid first, and for county residents, any remaining co-pays and deductibles are waived. Non-county residents are responsible for normal co-pays and deductibles. No one is ever denied emergency care for an inability to pay. If the patient is not Medicare or Medicaid eligible and does not have any insurance, all co-pays and deductibles are waived.
Mercedes E class. Not Mercury.
I’m not sacrificing anything else to buy the car. And besides it’s my only car.
But a lot of people can’t afford their rent or mortgage or education or medical bills because of their bad decisions about cars.
I worked at a bank. We had thousands of people get foreclosed but kept their fancy cars. Maybe they then lived in them.
1 Like
Sounds like a bank making lousy loan decisions.
1 Like
Saying you had lower foreclosures compared to competitors doesn’t mean you’re loan decisions were good. Just means they were better than the competition. A lot of banks had to get bailed out from the 2008 crash…some more than others. They ALL made extremely bad decisions with bundling.
1 Like
That reads like you are refering to the bank you worked at
We didn’t bundle. Those loans were admittedly garbage. It’s a clear sign the loans may be dodgy if a bank sells/ bundles them shortly after they make them.
All types of loans default to a certain extent. Even big corps and some governments like Argentina. It’s a cost of doing business. That’s how banks work. Triple AAA rated customers who never default also never borrow. Therefore we charge an appropriate interest rate to account for the risk. Riskier customer, higher interest rate.
We took no bailout money.
And as I mentioned way above the people who did foreclose very often chose to continue paying their car loans. Doesn’t matter though. They weren’t going to get any reasonable rate credit for seven years of any type. Better hope their cars lasted that long. A foreclosure trashes your credit score.
I do not want to pick but when bankers counts pennies and some of your ilk have put foreclosures and repossessions on homes and cars when the customer owes less than one dollar; you cannot get away with such a relative term as “very low foreclosure rate”…
“Count pennies…” was your competitors rate 50- to 75- percent, and your “low rate was “only” 35- to 50- percent…
See, terms like “not as much, less than, fewer, etc…” are all meaningless without specifics…
Inquiring Minds Want to Know…
Never said you did. I was just showing you the fallacy of your argument. Saying your loans were better than other banks does NOT mean your loans were good. Just that they were better.
1 Like
That is typical, people will hold on to what they can.
In my area, seems like half the houses were foreclosed on during 2008-2010. During one 12-month period, it was reported that 20% of the homes in the county were in foreclosure.
Mostly triggered by periods of unemployment but a common remark was that the homeowners did not want to continue making payments on a property with a declining value. That was foolish, 5-8 years later real estate values increased and many who experienced a foreclosure remained in rental properties.
…and the banks are to blame for loaning money, because half of the people in this world are not trustworthy.
Well I hesitate to add my comment again but I had CDs at the bank since high school saving for college. They backed me when I needed it and have been loyal ever since. It is a good family owned bank. However, I’m not a fool. They never lost a dime on me.
In 1981 I needed a car. I laughed at my CPA brother in law when h3 said he got a 17% car loan as a personal favor. Some of you folks may remember that time period. Best I could get at the bank was 18% which I took. Two years later the rates had come down so I went to see my buddy at the bank to refinance. He said why bother and explained the rule of 78ths that they used. I had been paying mainly interest for the first two years and now it was mainly principle. A refi would have done nothing for me. So I can understand why someone might choose to keep the cars and let th3 house go as a practical business decision. In 1986 I bought a new Buick and financed through GM at 7.5%. Instead of $10,000 in 81, it was $17,000 in 86 but the term and payments were the same. That, plus joining the credit union pretty much ended any bank loans. 2% became the norm. Whatever the point of my comment was, there are cheaper better places to get loan money than at my bank that I’m very loyal to. They don’t make money from me but they do have my money to loan to someone else. We did later get a six month construction loan where they offered a foreclosure that we could take over. No thanks. Foreclosures have many legal protections that a car loan doesn’t have. So I guess the point is, I can understand keeping a car that has already had most of the interest paid on and going to foreclosure on a home where they would have several opportunities to get it back. Not all is black and white.
As far as cost of a car goes, I like to calculate the cost per mile for the car. I’m currently at about 7 cents for one and 40 cents for the other. I have been as low as 2 cents and as high as $2 per mile. Just depends on how much you drive.
That’s my story.
Oh how we remember those years… We had just returned to the states from a 3-year overseas tour. I was a freshly promoted Master Sergeant (E-7) and we wanted to buy our own home and stop the renting… The Air Force usually gave a member in my career field a 5-year state-side assignment after a long tour overseas.
We went to bank after bank and even the military credit union and the best interest rate we were offered was 23% and it went as high as 27%… They claimed it was our “credit history”, never had a car loan, only one credit card with Sears (for a sofa we bought 5-years previously and long paid off), and our slate was blank for the three year period previously (while overseas…).
We were still victims of the Vietnam Anti-war movement (soldiers, sailors, and dogs stay off the grass).
The only bright side of this was the 1981 Economic Recovery Tax Act that changed the law to allow all working taxpayers to become eligible to buy traditional IRAs. Although the limit was $2,000 on the working spouse and only $225 on the non-working spouse.
Our first IRAs paid about 21% through the credit union… We continued to rent until base housing became available…
In 1975 we wanted to build but mortgage were hard to come by. At one the banker told me they were making loans but they required 50% down. Different story in 76 and only wanted 25% down which we could do. Interest at 8 3/4 though which was good at the time. We asked for 30 years but the banker said naw, just go 25. Save a ton of interest and payment almost th3 same. There are many good bankers out there.
If you take a look at the history of mortgage foreclosures you’ll find the VAST MAJORITY of foreclosures are from people who buy a home that is right at their upper financial limit. One little hiccup can trigger a foreclosure. And the reason why poorer people have the highest foreclosures is because even the cheapest of homes is at their upper financial limit. If you really look at the data closely - percentage wise middle-class and upper-middle class people who buy homes at their upper financial limit have a higher foreclosure rate then poorer people. We went to a broker to find our current home and based on our income we qualified for a home over twice what we paid for our home. I have no idea how younger families can buy homes these days.
+1
When I was in the process of purchasing my home (back in 1996), the developer’s saleswoman really tried to push me into buying one of their larger models because “your income qualifies you for a much larger mortgage”. I resisted her repeated attempts, and as a result, I was able to pay-off my 30 year mortgage in 22 years.
1 Like
Same here. For anyone looking to retire. One thing that’ll help towards your retirement is to pay off your mortgage BEFORE you retire. Makes life a lot easier.
We had similar pressures. We qualified for much more house than we were looking for and the Realtors kept trying to get us to buy BIGGER. They kept pushing the “Leverage” benefit of buying a much bigger (read: more Expensive House) and as the house appreciates we would be reaping the benefits when we sold based on the banks borrowed money as the appreciation on a $600,000 house is twice what it would be for a $300,000 house.
What they do not also discuss or minimize is the cost of maintaining a house too big (higher heating and cooling cost, greater repair costs, higher taxes, HOA Fees, the “desire” to furnish those extra rooms, etc…). All these additional or increased costs play into reducing that Leverage benefit…
Like so many of my peers (military families), we were also enticed with the Adjustable-rate mortgages (ARM). The realtors and lenders especially pushed these mortgages to the military saying you can get a bigger home and you will be transferring before the rates go up anyway and when you sell, you’ll leave with a tidy profit… But in truth, some military did not transfer before the rates went up and had bought the biggest house they could afford and their income had not gone up as much as the mortgage payment increased.
And for those that did transfer before the mortgage payment increase, they often found out that Realtor fees to sell that house were higher than the appreciation on their home in those few short years.
And if all the advice and help in deciphering the true cost of owning a car is any indication, then realize that all the costs of owning a car and paying a loan off in 5-, 6-, or 7-years is trivial to the owning a home and paying a mortgage over 30-years.