Upside down on car loan and can't afford repairs
Without the cash to pay a mechanic, you end up making monthly payments on a vehicle you cannot even drive. Taking out a personal loan for the fix can double your monthly bills on a high-mileage car that already has negative equity. Alternatively, trading it in forces you to roll the remaining loan balance into a new purchase and become even more upside down.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Taking out a personal loan to cover the repair while continuing to pay the car loan
- 2Rolling the negative equity of the broken car into a new auto loan
- 3Considering a voluntary repossession to escape the immediate repair bill
- 4Getting a second repair estimate from an independent, non-chain local mechanic.
- 5Allowing a voluntary repossession of the vehicle.
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“I don’t have the money to fix it and Ive paid two months of car payments without being able to drive it.”source ↗
“I hate to roll over the remainder of my loan to a new car and be upside down even more.”source ↗
“$6k to replace the engine but we’d have to take out a personal loan and pay that balance as well as the car payment. Our concern is obviously possibly doubling monthly payments with that and still having a vehicle that has over 100k miles and a decent amount of negative equity still.”source ↗
“Decent income, no cash. About $142k between my wife and I and we’d both be on the loan for the new car. Life has been killing us big time.”source ↗
Where this came up
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