This last little amount before we begin to tackle the auto loan is like a thorn in my side. I know it is there and there is no easy way to get rid of it at this point. We don’t have any more big items to sell and all the small things that we have now, no one really wants. Movies, music, etc. Now it seems it is going to be patience to go the distance. Looking at our budget we have an extra few hundred now to put towards the debt which will allow us to knock out the remaining $3,500 over about 10 months. 10 months is a long time compare to the recent progress we have made, but if we stay the course it will be gone by February 2010.

After it is wiped out we will have $10,000 in an auto loan. If everything remains the same and we roll that extra few hundred dollars into the car payment and include the minimum payment we pay now on the credit card, that will be over $600 a month to pay every month on the loan. We could then have the van paid off by February 2011. Thinking about that as I type would be amazing. A loan we took out for 5.5 years being paid off in less than 2.5 years. Putting this in perspective like this brings back the motivation to up the intensity.

I will be driving to his place to sign the papers, remove my plates, and scrape off the registration and inspection stickers so he can have it. Aside from the money will receive from the sale by selling the vehicle we will also free up valuable space in our driveway. It is tedious to have to move three vehicles everyday so that the kids can enjoy riding their bicycles and coloring with chalk in the driveway. Not only that, but our insurance will drop about $300 a year and I won’t have to register it again this fall. Our state goes by the weight of vehicle to determine the fee of the registration. That thing was heavy. I think it weighed close to two tons, about 3,700 lbs. That is a lot of weight to shed and and great symbolism of a plasectomy.

I did all the right things; detailed the car, researched the value, posted ads, haggled and struck a deal. The windshield has been fixed and I was going to go to his place on Tuesday evening, accept the cash, sign the bill of sale and title over to him and say good bye. It was going to be like a dream come true. I left work on Tuesday with papers in hand with the exception of the title which is locked safely away in our safe under our bed. This should be easy I thought I will run upstairs grab the title and go, no big deal. When I arrive at home, my wife is ready to with her keys in hand as she will follow me to drop the SUV off and bring us back home. Let me just go and grab the title I say. I rush upstairs, slide out the safe from under our bed, unlock and rummage through all the important documents…”uh, honey, where is the title?” Now, we paid this vehicle off back in 2007 and at the time the title was held by Suntrust bank and after paying back the loan the title is mailed to you, yours to keep, yay! Given it has been two years it was a resounding “nope” that I entirely expected to hear. I checked a few places where I thought it might be with no luck. I gave the buyer a call, explained the situation of my idiocy and thankfully he was very understanding. I spent all of Tuesday and Wednesday night looking through every single nook and cranny of our home for this title. My wife found the congratulatory letter of paying off the loan in 2007, the letter saying we can register the vehicle in another state in 2005 when we moved, and all the service records ever completed on the vehicle, but no title.

Why, dear god, why? I made several phone calls to the state we live in, the state we used to live in, and Suntrust bank. Our state has no record of titling the vehicle here after we received the title from the bank. I am pretty sure we did this, but I have no proof. The state we used to live was rude to my request of simply asking if it still had a record of it being titled in that state and they said yes. Suntrust was above and beyond assisting me in getting a duplicate title. The title officer that I spoke with verified they no longer have it and then proceeded to call the state and order a second copy to be sent to him so that he may sign the lien release again and forward it to me once finished. That man is the man. In two weeks or so I should have the title in hand again and be able to get rid of this thing.

Of course I called the buyer and explained the entire situation yesterday and he was totally cool with it. Oddly, he isn’t in any rush and I couldn’t have asked for a more understandable buyer. The guy has a few hundred dollars of his money in my possession as a deposit to hold the vehicle. If it were me, I would have asked for my money back and moved on. Fingers crossed he stays interested the entire time. I really could use the money for the plasectomy right now.

Let me just say, I hate trying to sell a vehicle via the private party process. I do not enjoy the whole listing, waiting, calling, waiting, test driving, and waiting some more dance routine. It does have a great payoff in the end though, money. Back when we were purchasing the new to us minivan the dealerships that we visited offered us between $700 and $1,300 for it and to this day I am flabbergasted by that offer. I know they are in business to make money, but come on, I papers with the trade in values in hand showing that the value was significantly more. I suppose that this will be one of those life lessons to never trade in a vehicle again and to actually spend the time trying to sell it on my own. Heck, even if I accepted a low ball offer of $2,000 on the SUV, which I was offered constantly, I would be making out far greater than any dealer would offer.

The SUV that we have being trying to sell for the past couple months finally has a potential buyer. He came on Saturday to take a look at, test drive, and haggle me with pricing. I originally starting asking $4,200 for it at the beginning of February with little to no interest. Over the past weeks I slowly dropped the price down to $3,500 which brought the attention of a few buyers and thankfully one of them has committed to purchase the vehicle. The windshield has a crack in it from a tree branch falling out of the tree in the driveway from a severe storm and after haggling we settled on $3,200 for the vehicle with the windshield fixed. He gave me a $500 deposit to hold the explorer and repair the windshield. This works for me as I was selling it with a damaged windshield that I fully disclosed in the ad. The windshield will be replaced tomorrow morning within a couple of hours and it should be good to go. Hopefully by the end of this week it will be gone.

As much as my emotions and intensity to rid our family of the credit card debt and sell everything we own, I am glad I was patient with this sale. This sale, once papers are signed and it drives away, will take a serious bite out of my plasectomy. Fingers crossed!

This morning I received a letter from the buyer of my item explaining they received it on Friday and on Saturday tried to use it. They claim it didn’t work and they perceived the item as defective. I know for a fact that when it left my hands it was practically brand new used maybe a handful of times without a scratch on it. I fully charged it, installed the software, connected it to my computer, and everything was fine, nothing wrong with it. The buyer went on to say how they had connected it to their computer and it somehow erased all their existing PDA files and at which point they decided to then install the software. Immediately their antivirus software detected it as a virus and all the icons on the desktop began to change. They requested a full refund once I receive it back and I will give it to them as long as it is in the exact condition I sent it to them.

Now, to me this sounds like buyer’s remorse. The eBay member that purchased the item was new as of January 2009 with one feedback rating. They grossly overpaid for it on eBay compared to what other exact models were going for. Granted it is a computer and I guess everything could go wrong as they say, but honestly I was looking forward to that money to add another snowflake to the snowball to begin another plasectomy.

Ugh.