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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsRecord 7 million Americans are 90 days behind on car loan payments, Fed report says
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/car-loan-delinquencies-record-7-million-americans-behind-on-car-loan-payments-red-report-says/A new report on household debt finds a record 7 million Americans are at least 90 days behind on their car loan payments. Alana Frierson painfully recalls the day her car was repossessed.
"We were devastated. I was devastated," she said.
A city worker in Fort Worth, Texas, she fell months behind on her loan payments when her husband got sick and was unable to show up for his job. Bankruptcy followed.
"If you don't have any money saved, yeah, you're screwed. You're out on the street, or you're walking," Frierson said.
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According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, there are now 1 million more people behind on payments by three months than there were in 2010 when delinquency rates were at their worst.
Economist Austan Goolsbee is a former Obama White House official at the University of Chicago. He said millions of car loan delinquencies, even for subprime high risk borrowers, is a warning sign.
Wellstone ruled
(34,661 posts)7 million individuals,okay,family unit size is 2.5 persons for the USA,that is 17.5 million directly effected. Think about it.
PoindexterOglethorpe
(25,868 posts)People make really foolish financial decisions when it comes to buying cars, and get suckered into purchasing a car payment, rather than the car.
Honestly, if you take out a loan after your very first car, you are making a dumb financial decision. If your choice of car is predicated on the maximum car payment you can afford, you're making a dumb financial decision.
Of course, the automobile industry as we know it would collapse if people made sensible car buying decisions, wouldn't it?
in 2007/08, right as the economy was collapsing, I was a paralegal in a small firm that, among other things, handled foreclosures and car repossessions. I was amazed at how many of the car repos involved someone who worked in the mortgage lending industry and making well into six figures and decided to buy A Very Expensive Car on a 6 or 7 year loan. Then bam! The bottom fell out of that industry and the person was now unemployed and understandably couldn't afford the car loan anymore.
Apparently, a lot of people have never learned financial prudence.