errare humanum est

So, I decided I can’t sustain living with no emergency money and barely paying my credit card minimums every month — in other words, I’m getting rid of the Mustang. I’ve known for a few months that I was skating on thin ice, but I’m suddenly living month-to-month for the first time ever.

Now, I don’t make much (under 1000USD a month), but I was managing about $500 a month in that car for the last nine months. I’m not sure what changed, but something did about four months ago, and I’ve had less and less money available with each passing month. I’ve only managed to pay my bills by selling a lot of stuff on eBay/Half.com.

So, dilemma. I’ve always been a car guy, so I have a pretty good idea of the kind of car I want to be seen in. For example, you would never find me driving a minivan. I’ve been looking for cars under $10K, enough to get my payments below $250 a month. A local dealership has a 2000 Civic Si for under $5K, which would be great, but it has 110K miles on it. Another has a 2000 Celica GT-S with 68K miles, but the price is probably around $12K. Considering there will be several thousand dollars added to whatever new loan I get to pay off the difference between the amount owed on my old car and the amount a dealership will give for it as a trade-in……… Ugh.