| The Experience of Having Your Car Repossessed |
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| Written by Dean Norman | |
| Saturday, 21 June 2008 | |
 It started with a new relationship. I moved into a relationship with a woman that was new to me. She had kids. She was vibrant and encouraging and she wanted me to do the things that I wouldn't have otherwise done. Things that I knew I could do, but I thought sounded like a lot of work. The first thing that I did was to get my real estate salesperson's license. That's a great thing. I still have it and I still want it and I'm glad I have it. At the time I was driving a great little truck. It was a 2003 Toyota Tacoma. Totally bottom of the line - much like the Toyota Echo I drive now. It had manual windows and locks and a great little CD player. It was a manual transmission and got 26 mpg on the highway - really good for a truck! It didn't have an extra cab or four doors or cruise control, but for me, everything ended up fitting in it that I needed. I still see it driving around town. I know it's the same one because it has the same license plate - the first one that I ever memorized - and the same bed extender that I installed. At times I really, REALLY miss that truck. I could tie my motorcycle down in the back of my truck and drive to Chico and go for a motorcycle ride with my Dad or my friends. I could drive it over the hill to the Toyota dealership with my bike in the back and drop it off to get worked on and ride my bike back until they were done. I took good care of it - regular oil changes and new brakes and all the things it needed. I knew it was well built - it reeked of it - and I knew the care I was taking of it would keep me driving it for a long time. The insurance was cheap and the payment was $211.17 a month. I could afford my truck. In a "need to" situation, my trucks bench seat could fit three adults. Two adults and a kid in the middle was totally doable. Kids are resilient. Two adults and two kids was right out. My girlfriend had two kids. Don't take it that I'm blaming anything on her - it was totally my prerogative to buy a new car. I did want something that would fit kids in the back. I also wanted something that would fit clients in the back - I'm a REALTOR® now, remember? I got an evening job as a waiter and I was making decent money - more than I had ever made before, really. I figured I wouldn't need that job for long. I was going to be making big money in real estate. I had the guy to show me how and I got on with the right company. Everything was in place. If I bought a new vehicle it would only take a couple of sales to make a new car all mine - totally paid off. So it was time to go shopping. I would drive by the (only) local dealership here and there and look at vehicles for sale. They're a Dodge dealership, but they had a lot of used cars. Nice used cars. Cars that were barely used. Some were respectable makes. Some Toyotas, some Hondas, some Subarus. At the time I was listening to and reading a lot of Tony Robbins and Brian Tracy so I decided to set a very specific goal. I was to be driving a Silver 2003 Toyota RAV4 in short order. I wrote that down before I went to sleep and first thing in the morning for months on end. Brian told me I'd be amazed at the power of my subconscious mind to manifest this. I could see myself driving it. I knew what it would smell like. I knew how the cloth seats would feel. Apparently, the only thing my subconscious mind absorbed was the color. One day I drove by the Dodge dealership and saw a couple of Subarus out front that caught my eye. One was a blue 2004 Subaru Forester. The other was a Silver 2005 Subaru Legacy 2.5i. I thought it was time to test drive some cars! So I parked my beloved truck and become an infidel. The gentleman I spoke with was quick to hand me keys to the Forester and I took it out. Acceleration was fine. Handling was good. All wheel drive sounded nice. The kids will fit. I might even be able to afford $14,500 if I got a little shady on my income. The Subaru Legacy stroked my ego a bit more. A refined interior. Sport shifting automatic. All Subarus are all wheel drive and this one had more airbags than I could count (8). The kids will be safe in this! OUCH! $16,900. I had been working on my credit for about 10 months and things had come along nicely - 668 from 620 FICO. I also had about $7500 equity in my truck. What the heck? I've got no problem resisting pressure from salesmen if the monthly payment is too high. The next day I decided to sell my truck. I bought a for sale sign and wrote on it that I wanted $11,999. It only had 32,000 miles on it. This was the high end of bluebook, but I could wait for the buyer who would pay that, right? Then I got all antsy in my pantsy. I cruised in to the Dodge dealership and took my new lust for another spin. I came back and struck up a conversation about trade-ins. The salesman gave my truck the once-over, definitely seeing my for sale sign, and offered me $12,000 for it. What? You're supposed to get raped on trade-ins, aren't you? This might work out! We went inside to see what a payment might look like on my new ideal - the silver 2005 Subaru Legacy 2.5i. Paperwork to no end, some comforting phone calls from a salesman who is obviously working for me and then . . . $317 a month. This is where I should have employed one of my intelligent buying decisions strategies and slept on it. Or talked to some friends. Particularly the one who is good at talking me out of making unsafe financial decisions. What is it they say about hindsight? Clearly, over the next six years, I felt I could afford $317 a month. I only pay $575 for rent. I've got this waiter job which is doing great (during the summer, anyway, and guess what. It's summer!). AND I'm going to be filthy rich from selling real estate. I should own this thing outright in a matter of months - a year tops. Without batting an eye, I waved goodbye to my truck and drove off in my new car. It wasn't long before it started to catch up with me. Between my car payment and insurance I was almost paying as much as I did for my apartment. The candle was burning from both ends. 40+ hours a week as an agent and waiting tables for 30+ hours a week is a great work ethic, right? There comes a point where the work is supposed to pay off. I showed plenty of property. More property than at which a stick can be shaken. This was late 2006 and the real estate market was cooling. After this, everyone knows what happened to real estate. If you don't, check out the year over year numbers for Mendocino Real Estate. Particularly the number of sales. Less than half. The waiter gig has held me down. To date, it is the only stable thing I have had. It fluctuates, but I enjoy it and it's always at least decent for the pocketbook - sometimes outstanding. So I kept trying to chew this bite I had taken to no avail. I had also bitten off this relationship that was much more than I could chew. At 26, I was silly to think I could take on two new careers as well as two kids. Love them as I do, I did not realize the outrageous amount of responsibility involved. I didn't realize the effects of sleep deprivation. I didn't realize the absolutely frantic nature of every day. So I slowly inserted my head into the sand. Each day became about just "getting through." I guess if that's where you set your goals, that's what you'll achieve. And I am still here, so that's what I got. As far as my finances, payments started slipping on credit cards and I went in to crisis-management mode. I started asking myself questions like, "which one of these payments can I miss and have the least effect on my credit?" Or, "do you think that check will go through today?" It was a very slippery slope down to just throwing my hands up in the air. As the economy continued to decline, I got a call from a very nice man named Ron Harvey at Chrysler Financial. He seemed like a real decent guy - working class, just trying to do his job, not trying to give anyone a hard time. He rolled back a payment on my car for me to the end of the loan. I was back on track as soon as I could give them two payments in two weeks. I couldn't. So then I just started waiting. There was this surreal calm. No more phone calls or prodding. Just quiet. It had been a couple of months since my last contact with Chrysler Financial. I wondered for a couple of days if all of my problems had just vanished. Maybe they had too much else on their plate to come take my car. Or maybe my location was too remote and they would try some other method. Nope. The day they came for my car I taught spin class at 6 in the morning. It was a normal morning. We had just gotten through track 3 when the front desk employee came in to the silence of the 15 people who take my class Tuesdays and Thursdays. "Dean, you might want to come out here - this guy is repossessing your car." Thanks, Mr. Stealth. The mind races. How am I going to get home? How am I going to get around? How will I take the kids to school? How will I show property? I had already been considering most of these things in the time leading up to that day, but they took on a heft immediately. I wasn't asking questions about how my credit would look because I already knew it was shot. I was concerned about much more basic things. I walked out and the guy looked fairly official in that "rent-a-cop" kind of way. He had a badge on to simulate law enforcement but was really nothing of the sort. Law enforcement doesn't wear cutoff sleeved shirts with their mullet. They also don't bring their 12 year old son along for the ride. When I got outside, he already had the back end up in the air. It was attached to his makeshift tow truck - a big GMC with dual rear-wheels. He let me take everything out of my car. It was a very civil process, really. None of this take-it-in-the-middle-of-the-night sneakiness. I got all of my things out and placed them on the curb I would be sitting on until my girlfriend could pick me up - could she pick me up? I realized how much junk I had in my car and thought it was a really good thing he let me get it all out of there. At this point I gave him the keys to what was my car and he made his way toward the driver's seat of his truck. "You know this is all-wheel drive, right?" I said to him. All-wheel drive vehicles can't be towed with two wheels on the ground - it will RUIN the drive train. He said, "Oh, it is?" C'mon, man! You do this for a living and you don't know that ALL Subaru vehicles are all-wheel drive!? "We'll have to work something else out, then." It was at this point that I watched my car lowered back to the ground. His son, who couldn't have been more than 12 years old, got in to the drivers seat and followed daddy to wherever they were going. Unreal. I called my girlfriend and she was there in about 10 minutes. For the next few months I would be riding my motorcycle when I wasn't driving her SUV. She was very kind about the whole ordeal. I tried to scratch her back as much as I could. I bought all the gas and oil changes and took the kids to school, but I never felt good about any of it. Now comes the irony. Not two weeks after they came for my car, the restaurant swung into the Summer season and I was making more money than I ever had in my life. In the next three months I made enough money to pay cash for my Toyota Echo ($5000). If they could have waited two friggin' weeks I could have gotten well back on my feet. I realized I never settled in to that car. I don't know why. I never really fell in love with it like I have every other car I've owned. It was somewhat sterile. I don't know if it was the car or the payment, but after the initial lust, there was no lasting desire. Occasionally I would look at it and think it was good lookin', but big deal! The best thing I could have done would have been to sell it. I should have sold it before I even got behind on the payments. I had my head so deep in the sand and was so entrenched in survival mode that I couldn't even get myself to make a for sale sign. Can you imagine being in that place? It was real. Enough self-loathing... I'll write more soon... |
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| Last Updated ( Tuesday, 24 June 2008 ) |
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