Newbie looking for some advice.

welshdevil_2

Hi all, my first post here so please be gentle.

Unfortunately I have recently split from my wife of 10 years.
She has the house and children whom I still have contact.
My first dilemma is that we changed our car this May, we bought a Fiesta from a Ford main dealer, the price was £6999 but we owed £1500 on the part exchange car, so we ended up borrowing £8500 over 5 years for a 3 year old Fiesta, only 11,000 miles though.

I have the car as the ex cannot afford to pay this amount. The monthly payment is £198 which is a lot of money considering our other debt (that is another post).
I have just valued the car on the internet and it is only valued at 4500, I was quite shocked.

Is the only way out of this for me to get a loan of £8500 to pay off the finance then try to sell the car for a minimum of £4500. Then pay the £4500 off the loan leaving me with a £4000 loan which I could get for about £80 over 5 years thus giving me an extra £120 to pay off other debt.

I am sorry if this is the only and obvious answer, I just wanted to find out if there was an easier and quicker way of getting rid of this £198 monthly payment.

Thanks for reading.

welshdevil

Scarlett.1974

Hi there and welcome to MSE :wave:

I know pretty much next to nothing about cars, but I'm stunned that yours has dropped so much value in such a short space of time. Where did you look for the value? Have you contacted the garage to see if they could take it back and what the shortfall would be?

Sorry I'm not much use, hope someone more clever comes along soon

Scarlett xx

welshdevil_2

Hi Scarlett, thanks for the welcome.

I asked the Dealer if he would buy the car back off me, he said that they already had too much stock. I know that Main Dealers put a markup on each car but I was gobsmacked when I obtained the valuation from www.parkers.co.uk

When I did visit the dealer they contacted the finance company and the settlement figure was £8600.

welshdevil

CLAPTON

It's best for you to post a full SOA and look at your total fiancial situation.
Without seeing your total debts and income and spending its impossible to say whether refinancing the loan makes any sense.

Also what type of loan was the car financed on e.g. HP or a simple loan or what?

welshdevil_2

The ex-wife and I are still in mediation regarding the finances.
Once this is finalised I will know exactly how much debt I have, and more importantly how much money I have available each month.
I will then post my full SOA.

Sorry but not sure the exact difference between HP and a loan. What I have taken out is a 60 month loan with GE Finance.

welshdevil

susieh_2

Hi,

sorry I don't kow much about cars either but we bought a 52 Fiesta in July, 30k on clock & paid £4.5k, so I'm sure yours must be worth more than the valuation given.

Also have you thought about selling it privately (if this is what you're going to do), people seem to get more money this way as opposed to selling it back to a garage.

Susieh

delboypass

8500 for a 3 year old fiesta....ouch....

Brand New fiesta 1.25 is £8000

GettingThingsDone

Hi welshdevil - welcome to dfw! Sorry to hear you're getting divorced.

I'm not 'having a go', just wondering...

So it was £6999 for the actual car, which still seems a little high for a 3 year old fiesta.

I'm assuming they rolled the outstanding £1500 and the £7K into one £8.5K loan - ouch!

What happened to the 'part-exchange' part though?

I don't know if there is anything you can do about it now though. If you sell the car, won't you need another one?

Sorry to be the barer of more bad news, but although you borrowed £8.5K, it is very likely GE will want this back with interest i.e. a penalty for paying it back early. Get in touch with them and find out what the early settlement figure is. Have a comfy chair and a cup of tea to hand when they tell you.

HOWEVER - you are in DFW, so you're in the right place to get advice of getting out of this one.

Good luck and keep posting

gtd