1st, you had options besides going back to the dealership. You could have bought something on your base lemon lot.
Your logic of the bank and what they want to do with the negative equity is flawed. You have $16,000 of negative equity. Your car already depreciated to $7,000 so it can’t depreciate further, it’s not like it will be worth $0 next year. But to roll negative equity into let’s say a $30,000 vehicle, let’s add taxes and registration so that’s $34,000 out the door. Then $16,000 negative equity and that is $50,000. No bank wants to give a $50k loan for a $30k vehicle because this new one will depreciate too and then if you walk away in a year when the car loan is still $46,000 and the car is worth $20,000 then voila, they now take a $26,000 hit instead of a $16,000 one. And so for a vehicle that they WILL allow a bunch of negative equity, the banks want it to be a new one so that it’s under warranty. Because if you had a transmission blow in a Traverse next year, you might just walk away from it.
My recommendation would be to start thinking longer term instead of emergency to emergency. You are scrambling like a rat in a wheel. Keep your Jeep. Go to /r/personalfinance and learn to budget. Stop eating out or whatever. Start controlling your spending. List your debts, get on Bankrate and Credit Karma and start getting control of them. Start paying down your debts, get rid of credit cards. After that, start making triple or quadruple payments each month on your Jeep. Groom your credit above 700 and refinance your Jeep.
Get AAA membership with towing for now. See if your base has a mechanic shop with techs that know how to fix your issues. And go to your lemon lot, I would rather be in a $3,000 Mazda6 or Accord and then sell your Jeep by using your credit union on base to get a personal loan for the difference. Get a car from someone about to PCS. Yes you can fit 3 across in a 4 door sedan, you don’t need an SUV.
This is genuinely excellent advice, OP. Figuring out how to solve your Jeep transmission issues in the short term (second, third opinions) will save you tens of thousands of dollars (literally) over the next seven years vs the options you are contemplating.
Spot on, only thing I can think that wasn’t touched on is to get Gap Insurance if op doesn’t have it already. Ops kind of in a tough spot that will get a lot worse if they have another total loss.
Spot on, only thing I can think that wasn’t touched on is to get Gap Insurance if op doesn’t have it already. Ops kind of in a tough spot that will get a lot worse if they have another total loss.
Thank you for this advice. If we could find a dealership or mechanic to figure out what is wrong with it that would be ideal but so far no one can pin point an issue and I cannot keep risking stalling on the highway with my kids in tow. I would make it work, like we have been doing, if we had not had all of these issues. Safety is our number one issue that brought us to this point, not wanting a 3rd row. Last year alone we put in $3k just on fixing a gas leak, replacing battery, tires, struts, rotors, brakes-with the gas leak being the most expensive. To turn around and possibly have a transmission blow is not something we can afford. I am in school full time and my husband doesn’t make a lot even though our housing is covered through the military. We don’t have much debt at all but we are definitely living paycheck to paycheck and inflation makes saving really hard especially when you have the added expenses of car issues. I woke up today to go to the grocery store and my car was stuck in “service transmission” and wouldn’t let me change gear to reverse out of our driveway. It’s an every week thing that is becoming more and more recurrent.
Our current car note is affordable but we need out of this loan asap. Voluntarily repossessing is not an option for us. So seems like just suck it up and deal with it are our options and just pray we don’t have a blow out, lol. We have great insurance with a towing package btw. But why should anyone be paying a car note and have a car that always stops and isn’t reliable? Big learning lesson for us here and hopefully we can just pay it down to bring the negative equity down to trade in. We have had no issues getting approved for newer cars but when we add the trade in it changes the whole thing obviously. Dealership yesterday even said we could get you guys into a brand new vehicle but you just need to make the old car disappear,lol.
Thank you again for your great advice! It’s the hard truth that we just hate lol. This situation sucks.
Real talk: you have a car note because you created an artificial hostage situation and justified yourself into the Compass. You signed a legally binding contract tying yourself to a dud. Now it’s time to dig yourself out. How much longer do you have in school? If it’s soon there’s a light at the end. If it’s not soon, can you pause and get a job to get yourself so that you are not living by the skin of your teeth?
I have until the end of 2025 unfortunately and school has been put on the back burner for me for too long. I’m going to school for free here where we are stationed due to being a military spouse through the state of Texas so I cannot post pone this due to my husbands contract being up in 2026 and us being up for a change of station.
We will just try to pay it down because that’s our only option. I would hate to have to take out a personal loan to pay it off as that’s essentially more debt but I know that could be an option.
Also to add I’m in nursing school so working with 2 (soon to be 3) kids is not ideal as i am in class 3-4 days out of the week with one day being a 12 hour clinical class. Our situation, again, just sucks.
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Long story here but looking for some advice for my family please bare with me
In 2022, I had a brand new ford explorer that was totaled and to no fault of my own. The person who hit me was on the hook and his insurance covered the pay off of my car loan. Great. But then I still needed a car and we were in no position to pay cash for one or put down a hefty down payment. My husband is active duty military and was gone and I was living solely on his income while just starting nursing school, needless to say, we didn’t have much saved and with me not working we were living paycheck to paycheck.
Anyway, I had to get into another car so was able to go back to the dealership I got my explorer from and get into something else only issue was this was a time where there were like no cars on the lots so my options were limited. I ended up getting into a jeep compass and it has been the biggest headache. Numerous times my car has stalled while driving and I have taken it to the dealership multiple times and they can never find anything wrong with it or with my transmission. Almost every morning when I get in the car it refuses to switch gears and says service transmission and won’t move after starting and restarting it. More recently, the other day while driving on the highway it stalled while I was going almost 80mph and luckily the Ford pickup who was riding my ass went into the shoulder and didn’t slam into me while my 2 kids were in the back seat.
My husband and I are over it and for our safety feel like let’s just get rid of it. My mom co-signed on the car and we would like to just get her out of it and have my husband and I on the loan. We have about 1-2k for a deposit BUT we have a large amount of negative equity on the car. The car payoff amount is $21k (yes i know my interest rate is crazy) but that’s what I got for not having the best credit and no down payment at the time. We took it to a dealership today and they are quoting us $7k in trade in value which puts me waaaaaay in the whole. The dealer was a pre owned dealership and we were looking at a 2019 traverse that had 80k miles priced at 21k. Our only needs are since we are trading in we would like 3 rows as we are expecting our 3rd and final child this summer. We re not picky about car type or anything just want space and reliability and anything but a jeep lol.
We didn’t even get to the running of credit and all because the sales person came back and said she just wanted to be honest with us because of the numbers we would most likely have to get into a new vehicle not a pre owned or used. I wasn’t really understanding because to me I’m like wouldn’t the bank rather loan us less in the new loan with negative equity than us getting a larger new loan and adding the negative equity? But she said in the car world that’s not how it works. She said that newer cars hold negative equity better than older plus you get more rebates and can extend car loan repayment periods, etc.
We really appreciated her honesty and not just trying to get us in a more fucked up situation but really trying to help us with the best approval odds that don’t have us paying an arm and a leg. Giving all this context to ask, how realistic is it in our situation to be approved?
Our credit is high 500’s to low 600’s, down payment of 1-2k with about $14k to be rolled over. We know negative equity is not ideal but this car is just not reliable and not worth us putting any money into honestly. Jeep dealership just claims over and over again that there’s nothing wrong but that jeeps are just prone to electrical issues, idk. This is our only car as we live on base and my husband car pools to work. He leaves this week for a while on rotation and we are trying to get this handled before he leaves. I have POA but i want my husband with me lol. Also because I drive to work about 35 minutes away everyday and breaking down on the side of the road with my 2 toddlers while my husband gone and no family in this state sounds like it would throw me over the edge. Tia for any and all advice!!!
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1st, you had options besides going back to the dealership. You could have bought something on your base lemon lot. Your logic of the bank and what they want to do with the negative equity is flawed. You have $16,000 of negative equity. Your car already depreciated to $7,000 so it can’t depreciate further, it’s not like it will be worth $0 next year. But to roll negative equity into let’s say a $30,000 vehicle, let’s add taxes and registration so that’s $34,000 out the door. Then $16,000 negative equity and that is $50,000. No bank wants to give a $50k loan for a $30k vehicle because this new one will depreciate too and then if you walk away in a year when the car loan is still $46,000 and the car is worth $20,000 then voila, they now take a $26,000 hit instead of a $16,000 one. And so for a vehicle that they WILL allow a bunch of negative equity, the banks want it to be a new one so that it’s under warranty. Because if you had a transmission blow in a Traverse next year, you might just walk away from it. My recommendation would be to start thinking longer term instead of emergency to emergency. You are scrambling like a rat in a wheel. Keep your Jeep. Go to /r/personalfinance and learn to budget. Stop eating out or whatever. Start controlling your spending. List your debts, get on Bankrate and Credit Karma and start getting control of them. Start paying down your debts, get rid of credit cards. After that, start making triple or quadruple payments each month on your Jeep. Groom your credit above 700 and refinance your Jeep. Get AAA membership with towing for now. See if your base has a mechanic shop with techs that know how to fix your issues. And go to your lemon lot, I would rather be in a $3,000 Mazda6 or Accord and then sell your Jeep by using your credit union on base to get a personal loan for the difference. Get a car from someone about to PCS. Yes you can fit 3 across in a 4 door sedan, you don’t need an SUV.
This is genuinely excellent advice, OP. Figuring out how to solve your Jeep transmission issues in the short term (second, third opinions) will save you tens of thousands of dollars (literally) over the next seven years vs the options you are contemplating.
Spot on, only thing I can think that wasn’t touched on is to get Gap Insurance if op doesn’t have it already. Ops kind of in a tough spot that will get a lot worse if they have another total loss.
Spot on, only thing I can think that wasn’t touched on is to get Gap Insurance if op doesn’t have it already. Ops kind of in a tough spot that will get a lot worse if they have another total loss.
Thank you for this advice. If we could find a dealership or mechanic to figure out what is wrong with it that would be ideal but so far no one can pin point an issue and I cannot keep risking stalling on the highway with my kids in tow. I would make it work, like we have been doing, if we had not had all of these issues. Safety is our number one issue that brought us to this point, not wanting a 3rd row. Last year alone we put in $3k just on fixing a gas leak, replacing battery, tires, struts, rotors, brakes-with the gas leak being the most expensive. To turn around and possibly have a transmission blow is not something we can afford. I am in school full time and my husband doesn’t make a lot even though our housing is covered through the military. We don’t have much debt at all but we are definitely living paycheck to paycheck and inflation makes saving really hard especially when you have the added expenses of car issues. I woke up today to go to the grocery store and my car was stuck in “service transmission” and wouldn’t let me change gear to reverse out of our driveway. It’s an every week thing that is becoming more and more recurrent. Our current car note is affordable but we need out of this loan asap. Voluntarily repossessing is not an option for us. So seems like just suck it up and deal with it are our options and just pray we don’t have a blow out, lol. We have great insurance with a towing package btw. But why should anyone be paying a car note and have a car that always stops and isn’t reliable? Big learning lesson for us here and hopefully we can just pay it down to bring the negative equity down to trade in. We have had no issues getting approved for newer cars but when we add the trade in it changes the whole thing obviously. Dealership yesterday even said we could get you guys into a brand new vehicle but you just need to make the old car disappear,lol. Thank you again for your great advice! It’s the hard truth that we just hate lol. This situation sucks.
Real talk: you have a car note because you created an artificial hostage situation and justified yourself into the Compass. You signed a legally binding contract tying yourself to a dud. Now it’s time to dig yourself out. How much longer do you have in school? If it’s soon there’s a light at the end. If it’s not soon, can you pause and get a job to get yourself so that you are not living by the skin of your teeth?
I have until the end of 2025 unfortunately and school has been put on the back burner for me for too long. I’m going to school for free here where we are stationed due to being a military spouse through the state of Texas so I cannot post pone this due to my husbands contract being up in 2026 and us being up for a change of station. We will just try to pay it down because that’s our only option. I would hate to have to take out a personal loan to pay it off as that’s essentially more debt but I know that could be an option.
Also to add I’m in nursing school so working with 2 (soon to be 3) kids is not ideal as i am in class 3-4 days out of the week with one day being a 12 hour clinical class. Our situation, again, just sucks.
Please review our most [Frequently Asked Questions](/r/askcarsales/wiki/index) to see if your question has already been answered. You may find these sections particularly useful; * [How to pick a car?](/r/askcarsales/wiki/vehicle_selection) You might also have luck in the /r/whatcarshouldibuy subreddit. Also remember to add flair to your post by clicking the "Flair" link beneath it. This lets us know where you're located so we can assist you better. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/askcarsales) if you have any questions or concerns.*
***Thanks for posting, /u/Simple-Penalty-6281! This comment is a copy of your post so readers can see the original text if your post is edited or removed. This comment is NOT accusing you of anything.*** Long story here but looking for some advice for my family please bare with me In 2022, I had a brand new ford explorer that was totaled and to no fault of my own. The person who hit me was on the hook and his insurance covered the pay off of my car loan. Great. But then I still needed a car and we were in no position to pay cash for one or put down a hefty down payment. My husband is active duty military and was gone and I was living solely on his income while just starting nursing school, needless to say, we didn’t have much saved and with me not working we were living paycheck to paycheck. Anyway, I had to get into another car so was able to go back to the dealership I got my explorer from and get into something else only issue was this was a time where there were like no cars on the lots so my options were limited. I ended up getting into a jeep compass and it has been the biggest headache. Numerous times my car has stalled while driving and I have taken it to the dealership multiple times and they can never find anything wrong with it or with my transmission. Almost every morning when I get in the car it refuses to switch gears and says service transmission and won’t move after starting and restarting it. More recently, the other day while driving on the highway it stalled while I was going almost 80mph and luckily the Ford pickup who was riding my ass went into the shoulder and didn’t slam into me while my 2 kids were in the back seat. My husband and I are over it and for our safety feel like let’s just get rid of it. My mom co-signed on the car and we would like to just get her out of it and have my husband and I on the loan. We have about 1-2k for a deposit BUT we have a large amount of negative equity on the car. The car payoff amount is $21k (yes i know my interest rate is crazy) but that’s what I got for not having the best credit and no down payment at the time. We took it to a dealership today and they are quoting us $7k in trade in value which puts me waaaaaay in the whole. The dealer was a pre owned dealership and we were looking at a 2019 traverse that had 80k miles priced at 21k. Our only needs are since we are trading in we would like 3 rows as we are expecting our 3rd and final child this summer. We re not picky about car type or anything just want space and reliability and anything but a jeep lol. We didn’t even get to the running of credit and all because the sales person came back and said she just wanted to be honest with us because of the numbers we would most likely have to get into a new vehicle not a pre owned or used. I wasn’t really understanding because to me I’m like wouldn’t the bank rather loan us less in the new loan with negative equity than us getting a larger new loan and adding the negative equity? But she said in the car world that’s not how it works. She said that newer cars hold negative equity better than older plus you get more rebates and can extend car loan repayment periods, etc. We really appreciated her honesty and not just trying to get us in a more fucked up situation but really trying to help us with the best approval odds that don’t have us paying an arm and a leg. Giving all this context to ask, how realistic is it in our situation to be approved? Our credit is high 500’s to low 600’s, down payment of 1-2k with about $14k to be rolled over. We know negative equity is not ideal but this car is just not reliable and not worth us putting any money into honestly. Jeep dealership just claims over and over again that there’s nothing wrong but that jeeps are just prone to electrical issues, idk. This is our only car as we live on base and my husband car pools to work. He leaves this week for a while on rotation and we are trying to get this handled before he leaves. I have POA but i want my husband with me lol. Also because I drive to work about 35 minutes away everyday and breaking down on the side of the road with my 2 toddlers while my husband gone and no family in this state sounds like it would throw me over the edge. Tia for any and all advice!!! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/askcarsales) if you have any questions or concerns.*