Well, it finally happened. Our car has imploded.

We knew it was coming, it’s had problems for a while. We do have some money saved. We have enough to either buy a cheap used car, or to have a nice down payment on a new one.

Here’s the catch though: We declared bankruptcy three years ago. We’ve been working hard to improve our credit score ever since, but we’re not exactly “prime borrowers”.

So, here’s the question: Do we try to get financing on a new car? It would help our credit scores to have an auto payment. That falls under the “good mix of credit” that FICO likes to see. It’s also another regular record of payment on our credit reports.

Also, we have young children, and having a reliable car would certainly be a benefit. Since we have shared a “family” car for years, this will be our only vehicle.

If we do finance, we are certainly going to have a $400 a month or more payment – just due to the interest rates we’ll be financed at.

I’m really torn here. The smartest thing financially would be to avoid the monthly payment so that we can put more money into savings. However, financing the car would raise our credit scores faster, and put us in a better position to buy a house in a few years. Possibly saving us a lot of money in interest on the home loan.

What do you think? I’d really love to know! Would you leave me a comment?

I also want to share with you some of the excellent articles that I ran across this week in my feed reader. I really enjoyed each of these articles, and I hope that you will too!

The Funny Papers:

These two posts get my top picks. Not because they deal with anything serious, or earth shattering. Instead, I chose them because they are hilarious! They both put a big ‘ole smile on my face from beginning to end. Sometimes laughter really is the very best medicine!

• Clever Dude brings us McCain Vs Obama: DANCE OFF!!!
• Weekly Technical Commentary (fast becoming one of my favorite places to waste time) has an excellent post called “Stages of a Bear Market – Simplified“. This post is a little older, but ever since I saw it, I haven’t been able to get it out of my head. It’s ahem, a tiny bit off color, and if you aren’t a fan of “Family Guy” you might want to skip it entirely. However, I think it’s an excellent, perfect explanation of what’s going on with the stock market and economy right now!

Back To The Real Issues:

• The Digerati Life stands up for reality with the article “Despite A Recession, The U.S. Economy Isn’t As Bad As You Think“.
• Money Ning gives us some of his secrets with, “How to Not Lose Sleep in a Bear Market“. Definitely some good advice here.
• Frugal Dad has an excellent guest post on The History of The Stock Market.
• Credit Cards.com has the dirt on a possible political scandal involving a credit card.
• Steadfast Finances has an interesting article on “Preferred Stock Index Funds: The Future for High Yield Dividend Investors?“. This is the first I’ve really heard about regular investors being able to get ahold of this type of stock. I learned a lot, and I will be investigating it a bit further.
• My Two Dollars tells you how to “Stop The Flow Of Credit Card Offers To Your Mailbox.”
• Gather Little By Little has “5 Common budgeting myths” – with a snazzy picture of a unicorn. Budgeting’s a hangup for a lot of us. We’ve finally gotten into the swing of it around our house, but it took a while. Excellent article.

‘Tis The Season?

• The Simple Dollar has “Eleven Tactics for a Cheaper Christmas” I really loved this post. It got me thinking about some of my happiest memories from past holidays.
• Get Rich Slowly has a post called “Ask the Readers: Best Part-Time Holiday Jobs?” My husband and I usually pick up part time jobs between now and Christmas, so I thought this article was very relevant. He got some good reader responses too!
• Smart Spending Blog warns us about “Soon-to-be-banned plastic toys flooding the market“. Watch out for this stuff, seriously. I wholeheartedly believe retailers would rather make a quick buck than worry about whether or not we are giving out dangerous toys at Christmas.
• Money Crashers give us 5 Tips For Saving Money This Holiday Season

Blog Carnivals, and Celebrations

• Carnival of Money Stories: Edition #81 @ So Cal Savvy
• Carnival of Personal Finance #175 – “Jokey McJokester” ed.@ Budgets Are Sexy
• The First Ever Carnival of Consumer Credit @ Arrive Financial
• The October 20th Edition of:“The Carnival of Debt Reduction!” @ Bankruptcy Access
• We also had a guest post, “The Secrets of Successful Credit Management” at The Sun’s Financial Diary this week. Thank you Sun!

That’s it for this week’s roundup. I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 25th, 2008 at 09:45 and is filed under Debt Reduction FAQ. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.