What To Do When You Can No Longer Afford Your Auto Payments

When we get to the point where we can’t afford a bill, we tend to get a little nervous, right?  People should anyway, we hope that you do, it’s only natural.  We tend to clam up and hope that nobody will notice, we hide under the covers will just a tiny peep hole to protect ourselves from danger.

And that is the absolute worst thing to do -- it’s like when you were a small child and you broke something, and then you tried to hide it -- that just made your parents more angry.  It’s the same with dealers.

When you can no longer afford your auto payments here is what you need to do – basically, you need to take things head on and immediately as they come at you.  Do not avoid the phone calls that will start to appear on your cell phone, if you avoid the beast you just make it angrier.

They know that most people will avoid the calls, and after a while they will simply have no pity for those people, but if you do the opposite and call them back (even after then have been calling for a while) then they will begin to respect you and feel willing to try and work with you, and that is where you want to be.  

These dealers and lenders do not what to repossess your car, what they want to do is to refinance you and keep the payments coming in because that is how they make their money.

When you do speak to someone ask them if they can refinance you, this will typically mean stretching out the loan, decreasing the payments, and perhaps raising the rate, which means you’ll be paying a lot more for your car than you would have paid.  But, you get to keep your car and your payments will go down, so you get what you want, and the dealer/lender gets what they want.  You must search for this type of win-win situation, it’s truly you’re only hope.

Stay in constant communication with them after the initial phone call, if they call you then call them back right away, show them that you’re an adult and you’re going to own up to your responsibilities and you will have a much better chance of keeping your car.  And, keeping your car means that you will have a means of transportation for getting to work and so on.

If you believe that there is no way out and that you will not be able to meet your obligations and pay your car payments “no matter what” then the best thing that you can do is to consider a voluntary repossession, this way you avoid the credit problems and the weeks of sleepless-automotive-nightmare-nights.