We are in the throes of trying to acquire a second car since our truck has multiple problems...dh spent three hours under it yesterday removing the gas tank to try to find the fuel leak. It's at the top of the tank, where a hole in the bed from rust has allowed water to get in there and corrode the top "lid" to the tank. Unfortunately, finding the part has proven difficult, but he is still working on it. Junkyard might have it, but might not - it's a weird part - maybe we'll get a whole new gas tank because I doubt anyone is going to sell just the top piece like that.
Anyway, even if we get it fixed - I can't pick the kids up at school in it, and the transmission is going and it has some steering issues. Frankly, it's time for it to become a farm truck. Since we paid $750 for it and put in about $250 in repairs and driven it for close to two years, I think we did pretty well.
We have been car shopping, and think we've settled on a Honda Odyssey for me for the second car, like an 01 or 02 - we have found one of each in Vermont FS by owner. None at dealerships at the moment. We have gone over and over our reasons for a van and feel it is worth it to us to own one vs a wagon at this point in our lives. This has been a big thing for me as I am not a big minivan fan at *all.*
We are not sure what car we will get for Matt to drive, but we're planning to sell the Subaru Outback and get either an older Outback or Legacy or Forester, or perhaps a Honda Civic. I'm really pulling for a Subaru - I think we'll miss the AWD. It will be tough to sell our lovely new car and go older. Sigh. But it will free up money each month and that will ease some of our monthly crunch.
The current plan is:
*Get a loan through our credit union for the 01 Honda Odyssey and purchase it.
*Clean up the Outback and sell it privately.
*Use the cash from the sale of the Outback (around $7000 after we pay off our loan on it) to buy the second car.
This leaves our tax return free for some of the needs we have like grading our land to dry our basement and buying a lawn tractor (aka ride on mower) for mowing our acreage (I'm in denial, but we really do need at *least* that).
It also leaves the decision about the HEL or refi out of the whole car rearrangement. That is, we can later decide to refi and put the Odyssey loan into it, or not. We'd be refi'ing to put CC debt on the house as well as possibly a tractor. We are not sure at all whether we will do this or not, but if we do it's just the CC balances and/or the tractor that we are considering, we're not pushed toward doing it because we need a car, yk? That makes a huge difference to me.
We'd lose the Outback payment but gain a (smaller) van payment. We lose a $20,000 car and gain two $7000 cars - so overall the amount of money we have in vehicles decreases.
The only problem we're having, is that we have to go to the credit union that is near the van owner's house, and the nearest branch of that to us is 1 hr away and there is no way dh and I can get there before Saturday when we are supposed to go look at and probably buy the minivan (it has a big page online with info, we're pretty sure this is the one we want unless he grossly misrepresented it which doesn't seem likely). So we won't be able to apply for the loan ahead of time...it seems like a crunch to try to do it all on Saturday. The van lives 2 hrs away from us. The cu is only open 9-1 on Saturday and we probably can't leave here before 9 am (someone is coming to watch the kids).
The other option is to refi our current Outback and get cash out for the minivan that way. But, our int rate goes up to 8.5% and then when we sell the Outback - if we keep more cash out to buy the second vehicle we have to keep an 8.5% car loan. Or I suppose we could pay off the Outback in full and finance the *second* car. Granted, I only called the bank our current car loan is with - I could call around and see if we could get a better rate on a refinance if that's even possible. It seems high and I'm not sure if that's b/c it is a refi or just the particular bank.
If anyone can see a creative financing solution that I am missing, I am all ears. That is why I posted this saga in such detail!
I'm trying to figure out the logistics of it all.
We've discussed to death "minivan or not" so that topic is not really what I'm asking about. We have decided that a minivan is the right solution for one of our cars right now and for the next 5-7 years. We're open to what the second car should be (dh leans toward Civic and I want something like a Legacy or Outback to be sure we have at least one car with AWD). But our budget for it is around $7000. What I need help with is how to wrangle this all so that a) we don't depend on any house equity to get the job done and b) we can purchase the van that's for sale now on Saturday, LOL!
The other cash/credit options we have are a $2000 credit card check at 5.99% fixed, a $5000 tax return, and um a couple of other credit card checks at 1.9% intro then 16.9% or something like that, to the tune of $4000ish. But I really don't want to use them...
I will edit this soon before it gets googlized! Too much specific info.
Oh and the rush to get a second car is significant - dh had to take off work yesterday to take ds to the pediatrician, he will have to take Tues off to take him to the pulmo if we can't get a car by then, and I have appointments and places I need to go regularly and am really suffering without a car! It's crazy. I never realized how much I use it until it was gone! One car is *not* an option for us. Too much going on.
TIA for any advice you have!
Come see our Hyena Cart 
It's a huge 9-page loan app with the credit union, and you have to go in, in person.
Military wife of a deployed soldier. 
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