RV Financing..

bid_time wrote:

beemerphile1 wrote:
I know nothing about financing anything.

My advice would be to save your $$ and when able to pay cash, buy a $1,500 trailer. Keep saving and keep paying cash for future trailers, cars, trucks, and homes.

Before you know it, you will be debt free, have money in the bank, and a regular inflow of excess cash.

Have you ever considered that some times paying cash is not at all smart? Read the previous posts, people are getting loans for 3.74% and 4.99%. In the last 10 years I have had conservative investments that gained over 7.5% annual annualized return. Had i paid cash, I would have lost money; even before considering the income tax deduction which effectively makes the interest rate even lower. One size fits all advice like "Pay Cash" is worth about what you pay for it. Better to be an educated buyer, know your options, the pros and cons, and make smart choices.

In a perfect world and for the perfect family with rock solid will power your points are correct. I will agree with that.

However very few people have the will to do what you suggest, and none of us live in a perfect world. We are all human, fallible, and easily swayed by desire. We might think we are being smart investors but like the old bumper sticker, "__it Happens". Even if we do it right, we cannot control the markets or any other outside forces.

There are many people that have the education of which you speak and yet they are deep in debt, have a negative equity, and are only a few paychecks from bankruptcy. It is often a house of cards ready to be blown away with the slightest breeze.

One will never go wrong paying cash and cash only. If it isn't available, it won't be spent. It worked well for our grandparents, their parents and grandparents, and et cetera.

It has worked for us, we are debt free, homes, cars, money in savings, and on workingman wages. I won't go further into our finances because it is private and likely no one wants to read it anyhow.

Financial planning should never be based on tax code, that is a fool's game because the code will constantly change. Many experts and pundits espouse the benefits of borrowing and tax deductions but consider the source. Those people usually are the ones that stand to profit from your debt. Money is a great motivator, you don't hear much promotion of the debt free lifestyle because there is no profit in it for the marketeers and they are the ones that pay for advertising.

Debt is what drives the USA economy which includes the RV industry. If people stopped borrowing to buy what they cannot afford the economy would crash within a month. Unfortunately the economy will ultimately collapse anyhow because it is really nothing but a global scale Ponzi scheme. Be brave, be crazy, be a rebel, do something different - pay cash and live debt free!

Okay, off my soapbox now. :B