$1,000 Car Payment? Not Anymore!

I've seen a lot of articles in the news the past few months about people struggling with $1,000+ monthly payments for their car loans. For a few years that's been us, too! ...Well, the $1,000 part, but not the struggling part. When we bought our used BMW convertible in July 2021 we chose to finance it with a loan from the manufacturer. The monthly bill was technically only $945 and change but we rounded up the payments to $1,000. Now, 33 months later, we're done.

There's an old saying, Don't write checks you can't cash. In this context that's not just a figure of speech but a literal statement. We financed the car with a high monthly payment because we could afford it. We had the money to buy the car outright with cash, so making the loan payments was never an issue.

That's the biggest problem with people and their $1,000 car payments (IMO). They've bought more than they can afford. Like, they've bought a $60,000 pickup truck without the budget to afford it. What would have fit their budget was a $35k sedan or a used pickup. Now their monthly payments of over $1,000 are a monthly hardship for the next 5 years. They've written a proverbial check they struggle to cash.

The other thing that gives people trouble with loans is the interest rate. You can end up paying a lot more than the original cost of an item with all the interest charges. When rates were low several years ago, at least for people with strong credit, interest wasn't such a big issue. Indeed, part of our decision to borrow instead of buying the car outright was that we got a great rate. At 0.9% APR it was almost like free money. In fact, it was like being paid to borrow because I could invest the principal in low-risk securities and earn a better return than 0.9%. In addition, rounding up our payments to an even $1,000/month let us retire our 36 month loan 3 months early.

What's next? Well, we're still happy with the car, and it has just over 50k miles on it, so we're in no rush to replace it. If anything it's our other car, our 12½ year old SUV nearing 125,000 miles, that we'll replace first. But for now we'll enjoy being free of car payments for a while.

Trying New Restaurants: Red Pepper Grill

We tried a new restaurant the other night, Red Pepper Grill over in Los Altos, ~5 miles away. Part of my impetus to try it was trying something new. It's over a year now since my 2023 new-year resolution to try new restaurants. We wound up not really trying all that many new restaurants in the area last year so I consider the resolution still in play for this year.

The other part of my impetus was that I had a credit card incentive for the restaurant. Yeah, I've often got multiple plates spinning at the same time. 😅



The credit card incentive was this thing from Chase called Chase Merchant Offers. Each of my Chase cards has a list of about 100 offers from various companies for extra points or cash back on qualifying purchases. Most of them are from merchants I'd ordinarily never buy from, and trifling incentives like "Spent at least $200 at this mail-order clothing shop, get $20 back" are not enough to get me to try them. Several are from restaurants. At any one time there are usually a few from restaurants I'd consider eating at. Red Pepper Grill is a Mexican restaurant, and Hawk and I like Mexican, so we decided a few days ago we'd give them a try.

We rolled up to the restaurant early into dinner hour on a Thurdsay evening. The patio was filled with a birthday party group. Indoors there were plenty of seats available. It was just as well the patio was full as the weather outside wasn't nice enough to be enjoyable. And the party being outside left things quieter inside.



I ordered enchiladas Suizas (photo above), a dish with two chicken enchiladas covered with tomatillo sauce and cheese. Hawk ordered Monterey enchiladas, which were basically the same thing but with cheese filling instead of chicken. I wish I'd known what she was going to order before I made up my mind; I'd have tried something with a different sauce so we could get a broader taste for the menu between the two of us.

The tomatillo sauce was strongly flavored. That was a bit surprising because usually tomatillo sauce has a subtle flavor. The strong flavor paired well with the chicken in my enchiladas but overpowered the cheese filling in Hawk's entree.

The rice was meh, just standard Mexican-style Spanish rice. In other words, filler. The beans were subpar. They were too chunky to be refried beans yet too smooth to pass as whole beans. And the bits of cheddar cheese melted over them only amplified their inadequacy.

Service was spotty. There were 3 people working front-of-house but really only 1 was a full-time server. The others seemed to be managers who occasionally pitched in to help with serving the big party outside but would then melt away to do something manager-y. Assuming the birthday party was booked in advance they should have had more service staff working. Oh, and there were 2-3 hangers-on in the dining room who were family or friends of the owner. They kind of helped out a bit with the party but also created distractions for the employees who were working. One of them was visibly inebriated and creeping on women in the restaurant. Mr. Creepy offered to pay my bill when I humored him with a bit of conversation... then left before paying— either my bill or his own. 😨 The manager came over to me later an apologized, explaining that he told him to leave.

Would we go back? No.

For me the kiss of death for Red Pepper Grill was the cost. Two entrees, a mocktail, and a Coke, plus tax and tip, ran over $80. Our favorite Mexican restaurants in the area run $10 cheaper for the same size order with much better food.