Terrific. You da man.

 

One thing to check for is to be sure there is no pre-payment penalty on your current loan. Very few auto loans have those but its something to confirm. That way you'll know the refi balance actually is the 14k (after your 12k cash pay down).

 

i dont have the exact link but 2.9 is what they gave me on my 2010 loan refinance a few months ago, and i did as you want to and maintained roughly the same remaining term left: 48 months

process with BOA is pretty simple apply online, you would put in as your new loan amount requested: your current payoff amount minus the 8k so that would be about 18k. they will send back what you are approved for and a person from their team will call you with the details: payment, term, paperwork etc, its pretty painless and you can always say no thanks if you dont like what they have to offer. you can do a payment estimation in excel.

 

here is an excel shell i use for car planning, the yellow fields are where you would input information on a new/used car purchase, its set to MA sales tax but that could be changed for any state in the formula, regardless if you just punch in the loan amount, APR, term it will estimate payment for you

anyone planning on buying a new car/ messing with payment options may find it helpful

disclaimer: its for entertainment purposes only. i don't want any lawsuits complaining their payment was 5 bucks off or their state calculates sales tax differently MA is negotiated price-trade for a new car.

 

I made my decision not to buy a a place of my own so that I could afford my stang. Since I don't spend a lot of time at my place, forking out big dough just does not make sense right now.

 

Thats a lot of money for a condo. Which is a glorified apartment. (no offense). Perhaps you should consider getting something a bit cheaper. It is always better to pay a mortage than to pay rent but if your mortage is sky high it becomes not worth it. I just bought a 1050 sq ft house on a 1/4 acre in Ga. and my payments with 20K down is only 388.00. Of course I wanted a bigger flashy place in a neighborhood of the rich and famous, but it is better to go with what you can afford. I know real estate in the DC area is a bit more than in Ga. but I'm sure if you look around you could find something nice that would allow you to keep your car and only have payments in the 5-600 a month range. I also put 20K down on my car. All my expenses come to less than 1K per month. Then I save a bit and the rest is to blow on wine, women, and mustang mods. Don't try to keep up with the Joneses, is the main thing. My rule of thumb is never let my expenses exceed half of my take home pay, and save 20% of my take home pay.

 

All good thoughts.
For nice place in the D.C area, his payments aren't that high.
Everything is relative.
Near me (in the Boston area), real estate has only lost a little value from the sky high levels of the peak. Getting a place close to the city is still very expensive. Thus, we still have many commuters living up here in NH.