I originally financed $8500 (the minimum) through Mazda to get their $500 cash back and then paid it off in 9 months (only paid about $200 in interest).

 

Guy....OUCH!!!!!! I too am glad you love your 8, because....OUCH!!!

Well, I got my 2005 8 in late December 2004 but did not start paying for it until Feb. I put 3K down and traded in my old buddy Probe GT. I owe about 23.xK for my 8 and I'm planning on hitting it with at least two extra payments per year.

Gosh, I feel like a rich kid amoung rich folk...lol, so many people have paid off their 8's...it's amazing to me. If I were to sell my home I would make a good chunk of change (home prices in Central FL are going NUTS) but I would put a major part of it into savings as a just in case found and pay off a good chunk of my 8 but not all of it.

Poor poor guy....ouch...

 

Ya, I just noticed that some people owe 25k+ on this car... wow. Brave souls. That's one expensive love for this car. For those at 30k+ dang that is some long term payments. I wouldn't ever consider a car that is 30k and finance all of the 30k... that's some high *** interest.

 

I've been thinking about this, and while I'm not questioning your judgement at all, I do wonder why you didn't do it the other way round- since an APR on a car is basically calculated as simple interest (I think, since paying my loan down faster doesn't make me owe any less, like it would with a house-please correct me if I'm wrong here), why not put down say, 20-30% (enough to keep you from going upside down), and invest the rest of it while making payments on a very low APR (mine was 3.9%, and I know several people have gotten lower)? You'd be making compound interest on that leftover cash as long as you invested well, and should come out with more money on the long run. For example, I could have paid for almost 3/4 of my car in cash, but I didn't want to be car rich and cash poor, so to speak. I'm still ahead in my payments, and I've got leftover money just sitting around invested in the stock market doing it's thing.

Okay, anyway, that was my thought for the day.Sorry for the hijack. And no, this is not meant as an attack at all. I'm just trying to feel my way around this strategy- I know I must be missing something, but I'm not sure what.

 

Wow! I'm impressed. 32.5% of you have no payment!

 

I paid off my 8 about two months ago. However, I still have payments because I just loaned $30K on an 05 truck. I'm sure that once I pay off the truck I'll want to borrow on something else that I can't pay cash for