TIFU by letting the dealership finance guy smooth talk me and now my wife wont look at me
so this literally just happened like 48 hours ago and im currently on the couch writing this while my wife is in the bedroom refusing to acknowledge my existence.
our old hatchback finally died last week and since we just had our second kid we decided it was time to get a proper family SUV. my wife, who is genuinely the smarter half of this relationship financially, told me specifically to get a pre-approval done online first so we actually knew our budget going in. she even said to try one broker since some people from her work used them to compare rates and said it was really straightforward and transparent. did i do that? of course not. i thought i could just walk onto the lot and wing it like some kind of legend. spoiler: i am not a legend.
found a nice used SUV pretty quick and the salesman basically immediately handed me off to the finance manager. this guy was like... a psychological warfare specialist in a nice suit i swear. he starts throwing around these "exclusive dealership" weekly payment figures that looked super low and manageable. when i tried asking about the interest rate or whether there was a balloon payment he just kind of steamrolled right over me, kept talking about "total flexibility" and how they look after family guys. i felt like a absolute boss signing that paperwork ngl.
drove home grinning like an idiot and handed my wife the contract all proud of myself.
she went pale. like genuinely pale.
turns out to get those nice looking weekly payments the guy had locked me into a SEVEN year term with a 30% balloon payment at the end, and an interest rate nearly double what youd get through an independent broker. my wife did the math out loud and im basically paying close to ten grand more than the car is worth.
she started crying. called me financially reckless. said she doesnt know if she can trust me with big decisions anymore. i tried ringing the dealership this morning to see if i could cancel and they basically laughed me off, said the paperworks already processed.
i completely torched our financial stability and my wifes trust in me because i wanted to feel like a big shot instead of spending 20 minutes getting a quote online like she literally asked me to.
TL;DR: ignored wifes advice to get independent finance pre approval, got completely played by a slick finance manager, signed us into a high interest loan with a huge balloon payment we cant really afford. wife is furious and i am on the couch where i absolutely deserve to be.