Can I Replace My 32-Year-Old Vehicle If I'm Already In Debt?

Brought to you by the EveryDollar app. Start budgeting for free today. So I want some advice on if I should buy a car if I'm already in debt. I am about $69,644 in student debt. I just finished my master's degree. I drive a 1994 F-150 and drive about 30 minutes to work so I'm thinking I need a new car. I just started a new job and I make $65,000 a year. Cool. What's your master's in? Landscape architecture. Good for you. Thank you. How long you been driving the F-150? For about two years. Drive it for two more. Okay. You're broke. Do you have any money saved, Andrea? I do, yes. I have about $19,600 and some change. Okay. And nothing's wrong with the truck? It's just old? It's just old. I have had some issues with it and, you know, that uncertainty of driving 30 minutes every day and not being sure if something's going to happen to the truck. It's just stressful. But nothing, I mean, nothing, it's not like there's one specific thing that you're like, it's about to go down. It's just the idea that something might, right? Right. Okay. Exactly. And things have happened, but I, you know, just keep repairing it. And throw $18,000 at this debt too. Yes. We teach you to pay everything down to $1,000. Don't borrow anymore. Live on beans and rice and attack your debt and clear your debt. You believe in investing in this master's degree and so far you've gotten a $65,000 job as a result of it. Hopefully that's going on up from there to make your theory of investing in this education. Correct. So I want to see you make an a hundred because of this master's and I want to get to the master's paid off as soon as possible. This is not a pet. It's a student loan. Kill it. Right. Exactly. And that's how I feel. The cars that I'm looking at are all within the $37,000 range. 37,000. You have 19. You're going to go in debt while you're trying to get out of debt. And so that's why I was like, I don't think that this is the right position for me to make right now. 3,700 isn't the right decision. 37,000 is 10 X a bad decision. No, no, no. Right. Yeah. Well, well that was my question. You know, I feel like I knew the answer to it. Yeah. Here's the thing. If you will get in the business, if you'll set your head to say my number one wealth building tool is my income. And as long as I'm giving that away in car payments and student loans, I'm going to be what's known as a middle-class broke person, but you can make 65, 75, 85, 95,000 as your career expands here and become a millionaire. If you'll stay out, get out of that and stay out of that because you're not giving all your money away to other people every month. Right. And with my 19,000, you guys are saying, you know, pay everything, but a thousand dollars. Yes. I do have my company that matches $5,000 and 401k. Do I not worry about that? You do not need to be putting money into a retirement plan. You're broken in debt. Okay. Gotcha. Get the debt cleared up as fast as you can. Yeah. Andrea, when you walk the steps, we call them the baby steps. So it is that thousand dollar emergency fund. Baby step two is paying off all of your consumer debt. So that'll be your next goal. And hopefully you can do that in two years. And then you want to save up a three to six month emergency fund. And by that point, you're probably going to be simultaneously saving up for a car and that you pay cash for yes. And that emergency fund. And then after that's done and that emergency fund is in place. And if you're single and you have a great job, you could do a three month emergency fund that doesn't have to be six months. And then from there you start investing. So yeah, you'll be, you will not be investing probably for the next three, three and a half years, but that's okay. Because when you start investing, we tell you to put 15% of your income into retirement. So that is that 5% match and also a Roth IRA. So you will have plenty to catch up on. So just because you're not getting that 5% match in the next three years, you're going to more than be okay because you're going to be funding 15% of your income into retirement because you have that margin. So those are the baby steps. Really? We walk, we walk people through. Hey, Andrea, if I give you a book that shows you how to do all this, will you promise to read it? Yes. All right. I'm going give you the total money makeover. It shows you how to do all those baby steps. Let's give her every dollar for a year. We'll set you up on our budgeting app. And it helps you walk the baby steps too on that. Yeah. It's going to guide you through the baby steps as well. And, uh, and reinforce this idea that with no payments, you have money to invest. With no payments, you have money to invest. See what we've done is we all make most Americans make pretty good money. They just give it all to a bank. They give it all to Ford motor company, $37,000 car. They give it all to Sally Mae, you know, $69,000 in student loan debt. And we give all our money away. And then we wonder why they have tall buildings and we're broke. And they have Samuel Jackson saying, what's in your wallet. Well, apparently my money is in your wallet. Create your free every dollar budget today. The simplest way to budget for your life.