JohnRunchey.com

I drive a reasonably shitty car. It has many miles on the odometer, 172 thousand and change to be exact. It is 13 years old, the same age as my daughter who was born oh so many years ago. When it hits a bump just so, the front end breaks into a violent oscillation, feeling as though the car is going to tear itself apart.
 
It is a reasonably shitty car. But I love it.
 
You see, this car is fully paid for. It has been fully paid for since, well since I don't know when because having payments is such a distant memory. I suppose buried deep in my records somewhere is the exact date our payments ended. 
 
Shitty is probably a bit of an overstatement. How about crappy, that sounds better. 
 
I have no car payments now, and I have no intention of ever having them again. It is a liberating, wonderful feeling to be free of payments. As Dave Ramsey is fond of saying, the car drives a little nicer now that it isn't dragging a payment book behind it.
 
I haven't always driven a crappy old car. In fact this one started off as a nearly new car, bought with 3500 miles on the clock. And with payments. Payments lasting years. Sounds normal, sure, until you've lived without payments for some time. Then the idea of having a payment again is unfathomable. 
 
When I look back to what I've spent on vehicles, it pains me to think of how much lost savings opportunity that has cost me. I started out in college with a truly shitty car, a datsun 510 sedan with a toggle switch and pushbutton for ignition, a gas leak that soaked the back seat carpet and by some miracle didn't kill us, and more rust than real metal. Come to think of it, that car also had a front end shimmy at certain speeds. What is it with me and front end issues?
 
Anyway between that car and the present one, I've bought (new) the following:

• Toyota Celica
• Toyota Pickup
• BMW 325

Years and years of car payments. Had I been a wise person back then, perhaps if Dave Ramsey had been around to spur me on, I would have saved up and started out with a cheap-ass used car. All those years of payments, funneled into savings and investments instead of throw-away vehicles; how much better off financially I'd be today!
 
"But John, the BMW, wasn't that a great car?"
 
Yeah it was. But after a short time, it becomes just a car, just a tool to get you back and forth to work. The back seat has kids school papers on the floor. The pristine cleanliness on the showroom floor is gone. The payments, however, remain for years. 
 
So my next car will be a used car, bought with cash. Maybe something with 60 thousand miles on it. These days that's just getting started for many cars. 
 
It won't be showroom clean, but it also won't be towing a payment book behind it.
 
Oh, and what about the loose women? I don't know, it just sounded like a catchy title.