Well, it's a good thing I'd already made the cheerful post.

[rivka]

curiousangel just called me at the clinic. He heard from the body shop that the insurance adjuster is planning to declare the car totalled. (Um, for non-driving or non-U.S. readers, that means that they won't pay for repairs - they'll give us what they figure is the "actual cash value" of the car before the wreck, instead. Then they get to sell what remains of the car (which should be a fair amount) for parts.)

So now we have to go car shopping. The good news is that I spoke to the credit union carrying our car note, and found that we can buy out the loan for about $1500. So if they pay us the bluebook value, we ought to have a fair amount left over towards the next car. I also discovered, while surfing through sites about Maryland insurance law, that the insurance company is obligated to pay us for sales tax and fees associated with the purchase of another car. I don't know if the equitable settlement amount goes up to compensate for the hassle involved in buying a car - for example, we're likely to have to take some time off work to handle it - but it seems to me that it should.

We need to decide what kind of car we want - I mean, we'll almost certainly be looking for a four-door family sedan, but we don't know if we want to get another Mazda or look for something else. We need to decide if we want to buy a four-year-old car like the one we lost, at $5000 or $6000, or if we want to get a newer car and take out a loan for the balance. My gut instinct is that, given that we hope to apply for a mortgage in the next year or so, it would be wiser to avoid assuming a new loan now... but I'm by no means certain about that.

Grrrr...

[In addition to - or in lieu of - sympathy, all forms of Geek Answer Syndrome are welcome in reply to this post.]

Comments

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Talk to some realtors... they can give you advice on mortgages. Housing loans are different from all others. They're secured; the security usually appreciates in value; you can't skip out on them with the collateral; you *ALWAYS* have to pay to live *SOMEWHERE*.

There's a percentage (30%? Maybe higher) of your income that they expect you can afford to pay for housing. If your debt load is such that you can manage it easily, and still pay that percentage, there probably won't be a problem.

(And, if you have the right stuff, you can apply for an FHA loan, which means they can't reject you if you meet those criteria, IIRC... I could be wrong about this, and I've never done house shopping myself. I don't know how stiff those criteria are, though. The realtor can tell you about this.)

A new car loan *COULD* be a good thing, since it's more of a chance to establish a record of timely payments, and so forth. Just remember to find out how much cash you'll need for the house, so you can decide if it's better to extend the loan to build your cash reserves up, or if it's better to have a short term to have the loan paid off as soon as possible.

I can third the comments on Saturns being good cars.