The check has cleared and the MINI is ours…almost
Last Friday, I sent out the check (from online billpay) to pay off the bank loan for our new (to us) MINI Cooper. As you may know, we had about $13,285 owed at the bank and $6,000 on a 0% credit card (the MINI Cooper themed card). We used the money from our last car sale, plus some savings, to pay off the bank loan, and we’re down to $4,000 left on the credit card.
I logged into my bank account today and saw that the used car loan no longer appears, which means they have cleared the loan. The excess payment was deposited in my checking account there. In the end, we paid about $40 in interest, so if all ends right, we’ll have paid $19,325 for this MINI (yes, MINI capitalizes all 4 letters in their name).
What’s Next
Next, we’ll receive the title and Maryland Security Interest Filing from the bank in a few weeks, which makes the car officially ours. However, it won’t truly be ours until we pay off that credit card loan, but legally, it’s ours.
I expect to send another $2,000 towards the credit card in the next day or two, so we should have the whole loan paid off by the end of November or some time into December. However, we also have to consider Christmas gifts, so we may push back the payoff one more month (depending on the end-date of the 0% offer).
Oh, and if you’re wondering what qualitative benefits the MINI has brought to us so far, consider that after a 1-hour-plus commute home by Stacie one day this week, she still came in smiling. She immediately claimed that it was due to driving the MINI (the smiling that is, not the lengthy commute). She loves her car.
Oh, and we can now fit 2 of our cars in the driveway instead of just one. With room to spare!
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Good. I hope she can hold onto the happiness and enjoy the MINI. It’s always great when a big purchase makes you happy. My parents gave us a bed which I absolutely love! I relish flopping into it every night (maybe because I’m also always exhausted), the novelty hasn’t yet worn off. Having a comfortable car for a long commute sounds excellent!
don’t you have to get it retitled into your name now, too?
enjoy your mini…er, MINI
Tim, in Maryland, the title is in my name already, but it shows a lienholder as well. The lienholder (the bank) signs off on the security interest filing (looks like the title, but it’s not), which I keep together with the title. If I need to sell the vehicle, I sign BOTH documents over to the new owner, and they take in both to the DMV or their lienholder.
Complicated process and having 2 documents is dangerous from a procedural control point of view, but that’s the way it is in Maryland. Technically, I _could_ take it into DMV to get retitled just to have a single document, but that costs time and money and doesn’t give me anything extra except less clutter.