I doubt your credit history is worth 15K in cash to you, , which is what i’m guessing you owe. Especially when you can build it up again in 4 years and in 7 years the debt will disappear.

The title company took a gamble on collateralizing a car against a loan of cash so let them take the hit, they are equipped to do that and that’s what business they are in.

My other suggestions involve dropping 4K off the value and selling it as a private party sale to someone who knows what they are doing with cars, likes Coopers, and who won’t care about the engine and the tranny. These people exist all over the place.

Option C is for the mechanically unafraid and involves buying a $1500 beater for cash and driving that while you do the mechanical work on the Cooper with your won hands. Probably not practical for you but I’m going to list it as an option. For $500 in tools and a few weekends of your time you’ll be done. engine hoists and transmission jacks are available for rent.

None of these last options will help you much though if you don’t have cash to cover the gap in the sale price of the car and your loan.

Also, try to keep your car purchase costs to $5000 and under. You can usually do well with a used Honda or Toyota in the 5-10 year old range. Preferably a standard transmission as they don’t tend to fail like automatics. (My own car’s standard tranny is going on 19 years old now–same tranny, same clutch since the car was new).

Now, for practical advice about your car–if you have had two failed transmissions, I suspect there is a motor mount issue that is wearing the transmissions. If the motor is not properly mounted then it puts strain on the drivetrain.

Have you looked into putting the legal heat on the shop that did the work on your car? Transmissions should not be failing left and right.

Have you been to an online mini cooper forum and gotten experienced enthusiasts’ perspectives on it?

These are all things I would be pursuing. I would start with joining an online mini cooper site and posting about your problem to see what kind of feedback you get and how common this may or may not be for this make of car.

If your engine fails, as you fear it will, I would start investigating now how to get a used engine into the car. It shouldn’t cost more than about $1500-$2000 total for a good junkyard engine and installation. Aslso price out a new engine from retail sites like Autozone and from the dealer. Ask for the parts price from the parts desk.

I am a bit baffled by these kinds of problems because i have never spent more than $3200 for a car in my life and I’ve never had these kinds of problems once I learned what cars to get. Honda Accord, Honda Civic, some Toyotas–there are lots of cars out there that will run 26 years without problems. In the future try to stick to them, or at least stick to cars that are no more than 12K new.

It is not true at all that Roths are “the way to go”.

They are the way to go for people who expect to have large amounts of money available to them in their retiremnent that would put them in a high tax bracket.

Are you likely to have that amount of money?

I think for most people who aren’t going to have more than, say, 1.5 million per person in IRA investments at the time of their retirement, standard IRAS are actually a good deal because their tax bracket will be low anyways when they retire.

You really need to run the numbers of (a) how much you can reasonably expect to invest over the rest of your working life and (b) what is a reasonable expectation of investment gains within your IRA accounts, whether Roth or Traditional,

how much of your money you will be pulling out for each year, combined with how much other income you will have available to you, and what the comparative tax hit will be.

there are LOTS of factors involved in the Roth vs Traditional decision, including the fact that Roth accounts can be used for some other purposes besides retirement. You owe it to yourself to sit down and do some of the figuring yourself.

You can also max out a Traditional IRA in a year and add to a Roth as well because there are combined contribution limits. For most people who are not high income people that kind of combination will work to their advantage. I would suggest leaving your traditional Roth account as a traditional Roth account, transferring it to a brokerage firm, investing it in equities, and ALSO opening up a Roth account with that brokerage firm and contributing to that. I make this recommendation without knowing your financial status, however.

Keep in mind that you can convert to a Roth at any time. The best time to do it taxwise (if you want to do it) is in a year when you have low income. Unemployment is a great time to convert a Roth at if you have the cash to cover the tax bill.

I don’t like Laura’s (#1) advice – this is what I did. No, Mr Right doesn’t just appear. You have to look for him. It may involve being engaged in activities where you could meet the guy, online dating, whatever. Making a list and “dreaming big” is OK, but after you made this list ask yourself – are these things REALLY important? Are they really going to help during family life? Because ultimately, the most important is that he is a good person, honest, someone you can trust, someone who’d be with you when you are sick, someone who cares for you. Yes, you need to have chemistry, but common hobbies and such aren’t that important, neither are looks, they fade anyway (of course there has to be attraction). As you want kids, it’s important that he wants them too. Ask yourself why the online dating didn’t work: could you’ve been too picky? How were you choosing guys? When you were together, how did the conversation go. It didn’t work out for me either by the way, but there were a couple of guys that I thought had potential if I had been a bit less picky.

One interesting thing that I noticed is that my friends who got divorced found the new boyfriend or even husband relatively quickly than those of us who’ve been single for long. I don’t think it’s an accident, I think that people who are married are less picky, they know what is important and what is not, and they also really don’t want to be alone. Whereas those of us who’ve been single for a while are pickier, on some level we don’t want to give up our freedom. Think about it, think if you really want to find someone and what you’d be willing to give up for it. Also to expect someone to care for you, you need to be caring person yourself. You need to show to the guy you like that you are interested in what he has to say and that you care for him.

You don’t know how long you’ll be able to have kids. I had premature ovarian failure at 38 (though given the symptoms I’d imagine I actually had the problems starting at 32). Bottom line -you don’t know how much time you have left if any. So if you really want kids – consider having them by yourself. It’ll take the pressure of of having to find the guy soon. In hindsight, I wish I had.

You’re right, of course. There are certain things that can be successfully included in a pre-nup, and other things that cannot be. Things that are open to negotiation can be included in a pre-nup, and they’ll likely stand up in court.

However, you cannot sign away your right to something guaranteed to you by law. So if Family Law guarantees you a 50% share of any marital assets, than a pre-nup that sought to alter that formula would be invalid and ignored.

On the other hand, you’re more than welcome to specify who gets your grandmother’s earrings (under the assumption that an asset of equal value would be surrendered to the spouse), as long as the total division of all divided assets remains 50/50.

So say a couple gets married, and they both sign a pre-nup that says in the event of a divorce, the husband will keep any assets he inherits during the marriage.

While they’re married, the husband’s parents die, and he inherits $4 million.

Then the marriage breaks down and they divorce. The wife takes him to court requesting half of the husband’s $4 million inheritance. The husband holds up the pre-nup and says, “we agreed that I’d keep this money.”

Since Family Law in Ontario says that spouses are entitled to 50% of any assets acquired DURING the marriage, the judge will side with the wife. He will disregard the pre-nuptual agreement and award the wife $2 million (in addition to half of whatever other marital assets are part of the dispersement).

Heck, in BC a judge has already ignored a man’s last will and testament, and divided things up how HE felt was fair. Aren’t wills just as sacred as pre-nups?

But guess what? You already *are* operating under a legally binding plan for separating your assets in the case of divorce.

It’s the one that your state has put into place. Think of that as the “default” plan that you get if you both decide not to do a prenup.

So a prenup is only basically saying “we don’t think the default plan suits us, so we’re specifying another one.” It doesn’t mean you’re planning for a divorce or that one of you doesn’t trust the other one. It just means that you want to customize the default plan.

JJ

Many people seem to think that a prenup is a cold and heartless intrusion into something (marriage planning) that should be joyous and emotional. If handled wrong, it certainly can be, but given that the divorce rate is pushing 50% in many parts of North America, it’s not an unreasonable precaution. Not to mention that sometimes a partner dies unexpectedly, and then a prenup must integrate with whatever will you’ve created.

In addition, something resembling a prenup may actually be a legal requirement in some jurisdictions (i.e., full disclosure of your assets and liabilities). In other jurisdictions (including Quebec, where I live), a prenup is necessary because if you don’t have one, the government will decide how your assets should be divided. Prenups can also be an important way to protect the children of one partner from a previous marriage after the death of that parent.

All that being said, a prenup should be created the same way you create your wedding ceremony and marriage vows: with love, respect, and a concern for the other person’s needs. That attitude is a great way to start a marriage and a good precedent for how to be good to each other in the future. Should the marriage eventually fail, that same attitude can help you end it gracefully and without the kind of festering pettiness that dogs so many divorces.

Giving up your car “voluntarily” may indeed result in lower costs for the borrower (because the lender tacks on any extra charges, like towing and storage fees, onto the outstanding balance owing), but I still disagree that it does any less damage to your credit report.

In your credit report, they’ll look exactly the same. It will show up as a repossession. A breach of a loan agreement. It will make future borrowing, insurance, and even job and apartment hunting, more difficult and costly for you.

I smell a business opportunity: Trent as matchmaker.

Just as an aside, we met via Internet, but the site never matched us. My husband just got tired of the people that were showing up as his matches and searched through the site by hand. I showed up, we e-mailed and then met in person, and we were together every weekend until I left to complete the adoption.

I guess what I’m trying to get at is to be open to many ways to create a family and don’t ever give up on the universe surpassing even your greatest expectations.