M40 Update

Meh. What a crappy week.

Firstly a positive, I have $70 in my M40 savings account and earnt 15c interest on it last month.

Not so positive. Several unexpected bills and expenses arrived this week. Meaning the budget is not even going to come close to covering the expenses. And I don't have much of a plan to tackle it.

My pile of stuff heading to gumtree/garage sale has grown, I should get at least $100-$200 for that, but the garage sale date is not set until next month.

I have a market stall this month, I'm hoping on about $200 or so from that.

I have yet to put in our family tax returns, but should get enough back to cover some bills.

One of our biggest dilemmas is a car loan. 2 years ago we took out a loan to buy a car as a businees expense. This year the business was closed due to my husband taking up another jub offer. This job offer came with a work vechical. The car loan is about $18000, but looking on car sales ads, the car probably has a resale value of $13000. The repayments are $520 p/m and we are really struggling to meet them.

Option One is to keep meeting the repayments and keep hoping for the best. The advantage of keeping the car is that it is still an expense claimed at tax time according to our accountant.

Option Two is to sell the car, use some of that money to pay out a personal loan (also a business debt) and put the rest straight on the car loan, leaving us with app $7000 to be paid off. We still have $520 p/m repayments to make, but we can be rid of the personal loan ($160) and car expenses (rego, insurance, about another$120 p/m). That $280 per month could go into extra repayments for the car.

Option Three. Let the car get repossesed. Not an option as this would totally screw my credit rating and we would still probably have a debt to pay on the car.


Now I've written it out, I think option 2 is the only way really to go.

Want to buy a car?