Fed Financial - College Student...No Money..Little Credit. Need Car...HELP?

College Student...No Money..Little Credit. Need Car...HELP?

I'm 19 and attend the University of Cincinnati. I need a new car my 1989 Chevrolet is no longer reliable. I found a Hyundai for 5000 dollars. I've checked it out and it's a good car. My total net worth is $3500 dollars. I have had a credit card for 1 year now and the last time i checked my credit report it said Never late Fast pay and showed my 3500 Stafford loan. My parents have awful credit and cannot cosign for me. WHAT DO I DO? My Credit card limit is $2000. Any suggestions? I've thought of some ways to make this purchase but they're kinda shady. I want to keep $500 on hand for maintenance/gas/insurance type stuff. How do i play with the numbers to make this work? Other Info. I was denied a CHASE loan because they said i dont make enough BUT I do. They didn't take into the fact of my summer temp jobs. Now I make approx. $300/month(I'm a full time student) but in the summer I make at least 5644. In a year I make 8344.

Public Comments

take a bus car pool with your classmates/friends call a cab walk
See if you can buy a car from a place where you can get a loan through them. It's not ideal, but you gotta do what you gotta do. Good luck!
Find a cheaper car... 5000 dollars is just plain out of your price range, if you have your heart set on it then you just kind of set your sights too high. You can find a reliable car that doesn't need too many repairs in a cheaper price range, but it won't be pretty and it probably won't have a cd player or anything. It should be easy to find a cheaper, more economical car. You could also try to sell your current car, even if you could get a little bit of money from it it would help.
Try a buy here pay here used car dealer.
Maybe take on another job. Save your money until you can pay for a car.
Public Transit. Used cars are around for less than 5k. It's everything else that are killers: Insurance - $500 / yr. 50 cents per MILE for Fuel, Oil changes & other wear and tear.
That's a tough one. Cars are a real problem today because they are so expensive relative to what they were in the past. When I was a kid a brand new car was 3000. And it's more than just inflation, cars today cost a far higher percentage of a person's annual income. But you really can't afford a 5k car. That would be equal to someone who makes 50k a year buying a car for 40k or so. Can't be done. Well, it can, but you can't afford it. Are you sure you NEED a car? Can you possibly go without one? A lot of people could but just won't. But what you don't want to do is put some of this on a credit card and don't do anything "shady."
Do not begin a lifetime of living beyond your means. Suggestions: Find a car that is not so expensive. Do you really NEED a car? My first years of college I didn't have one - I depended on public transportation and the RR (to travel home for breaks), or on friends who did have cars. If last summer you made over $5K, where is that money now? What did you spend it on instead of saving at least some of it for just such a possibility? I know Chevy's are great cars, but did you ever considere that you are were driving a car that was the same age you are (how's that for irony...) You are figuring your Student Loan as your net WORTH? It's a debit that you owe, not an asset. For fun I did a little math.... Let's say you get this $5000 car with a 10% interest rate over 36 months you'll owe $180.50 every month for the car. Let's say you drive 1,000 miles a month (average) and you get 25 miles to the gallon. That's 40 gallons of gas a month @ $3.00 a gallon (cheap by where I live, don't know what OH is like for gas) That's another $120 a month. Insurance? You're a guy in college - that's gotta run you probably $2K a year for insurance, so another $166 a month. Let's see ($180.50 + $120 + $166), so far we are at $466 a month for the car, gas and insurance. Let's hope you don't need any maintanence done. You make $300 a month,, so now you are $166 in the hole every month already and you have no spending money, no money for books, etc. And we haven't even talked about what you pay for your cell phone.... You don't make enough for this car. You don't make enough to get a car that is half this amount.... There's no way to "play" with the numbers to make this work. (Golly, I'm such a geek - figuring out your costs was fun....)