A common question that comes up when people want to get into car hacking, but already own a car they don’t want is:
“How do I get out of my current car without losing my ass?”
The answer is not typically as cut-and-dry as “sell it”.
In most cases, they’ve fallen victim to the typical dealer traps so they’re facing one of two situations:
1) They’re in a lease with lots of time left and seemingly no way out…
or
2) They’re “upside-down” on their car – meaning they owe more than the car is worth.
In either case, taking a little bit of pain in the short run will stop a potentially disastrous loss of cash in the long run.
Here’s what to do if you fall into one of those categories…
If you’re stuck in a lease:
Your best option is to go to www.SwapALease.com and offer your car.
SwapALease is literally a marketplace to trade or sell leases that aren’t full-term for cars of all makes and models.
Believe it or not, many people use this method of allowing people to take over their lease.
In many cases, to get the lease transferred you’ll need to offer some kind of cash incentive upfront.
What this means is if you have 10 months left on a $399 lease, and you offer a $1,000 incentive, you give the person taking over your lease $1,000 when the transfer is done, which reduces the true cost of their monthly payment to $299.
Why would anyone do that?
Because $399 for 10 months = $3,990 expected out of pocket. You can pay $1,000 today to save yourself $2,990 that would have otherwise been lost in lease payments.
Again, that may sting in the short term, but it’s a lot better than losing the remainder of your lease payments.
If you are upside-down on a car loan:
You have a few options.
The first is to pay off the difference in cash when you sell or trade in your car.
Obviously, not everyone has the cash lying around to do this…
But if you do, it’s worth considering so you can completely reset and start fresh with a proper hack.
Remember, as a hacker, you’re an asset manager, so you need to take a longer view of things than just one deal or one month’s payment.
Getting your loss from a bad deal over with will allow you to rebuild and actually gain wealth through your hacks. Short-term financial discomfort can set you up for long-term success!
The second option, if the numbers make sense, is to roll the negative equity into the loan you take out on your hack.
Here’s what that looks like:
Let’s say you have a Mustang GT right now that you owe $24,000 on, but it’s only worth $19,000, and you’re going to hack a Nissan GTR for $55,000.
What you would do in this situation is get a loan for $60,000 for the GTR (most banks lend up to 120% of what they consider retail) and use that extra money to pay off the balance of the Mustang (Even if you’re buying and selling private party, you can have a dealership run these transactions for you to make the title transfers and payoffs easier).
The benefit of this strategy is that you can pay off that $5k in your monthly payments, and because the GTR won’t depreciate, you’re not at risk of staying upside-down as long as you make $5k worth of principal payments on the GTR, which would take about 6 months on average.
It’s crucial that when rolling negative equity, you are in a good enough financial position on the new car that you don’t go further into the hole.
That’s what Exotic Car Hacks will teach you, among other things like legal tax loopholes, insurance and maintenance hacks, and more.
Now, is any of this ideal?
No, not really.
The ideal situation would be to not get stuck in a lease or be upside down on a car loan to begin with.
But we can’t change the past.
We can, however, change the future.
If you are ready for a future where you get to drive a car you love without losing money, being upside down, or stuck for 3+ years in a lease…