What’s The Most Expensive Car Payment You’ve Ever Had?

Photo: Logan Carter

Buying a new car is always a battle between what your heart wants, what your brain wants, and what your bank account can handle, but if you’re a car person then you know the heart often gets what it wants despite logic pointing you in the other direction. As someone who’s been fawning over shiny new cars since I could walk, I totally understand the mental gymnastics that car people are capable of when it comes to justifying the purchase of a car that’s logically out of your price range, but one that already lives in your heart.

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I grew up in fiscal insecurity, whether I was squeezed into the back seat of my dad’s 1986 Mustang SVO or strapped into my mom’s base model 1996 Grand Caravan, my parents were likely to be arguing over money. This upbringing has kept me relatively stingy, but not stingy enough to buy a Prius, so my biggest car payment ever is the current note on my 2017 F55 Mini Cooper S Hardtop 5-door. I bought it used from CarMax in 2020 for around $18,000 plus the price of the extended MaxCare warranty, and I pay about $300 each month for the joy of owning her. I put about $8,000 down on the Mini, so I was able to keep the monthly costs relatively low, thankfully.

Prior to the Mini, I had bought all my cars outright, which isn’t a brag, I just bought cheaper cars. I bought my first car, a 2005 Saab 9-3 cabriolet outright off of Craigslist, and when that inevitably died, I bought my 2003 Honda CR-V outright from a dealer, then I paid my mom cash for their 2010 Subaru Outback. Then I was mesmerized by the shiny little Mini Cooper at CarMax, and the rest is history.

But enough about my poor financial decisions; let’s talk about yours. I see tons of fully-loaded F-150s driving around, and I know that most Americans can’t afford that outright, so there have to be plenty of you who have ended up in some nasty loan situations. There’s no shame in it, either, since we’re all car people here and we all understand how tough it can be to reach an amicable settlement between your logical brain and your impulsive brain. So go ahead, vent to us about the most expensive car payment you’ve ever had.