Made a very dumb decision after establishing credit
For context i had a 03 Honda pilot and was experiencing issues with the motor and i had no A/C all 3 years of me owning it. I am currently 19 years old and not long after i started building credit i had the bright idea of getting a new car since i wanted to keep building my credit and also the fact that the car i was driving was getting close to 300k miles and already experiencing issues. I went and bought a used truck from a nearby dealership and i tried being smart and getting something with lower mileage so around 100k miles and less than $30k.
The dealership i bought that vehicle from let me test drive and look over it and because it’s my first big purchase i was excited and decided to pull the trigger and get it for $30k and 13% apr with no money down and a term of 75 months. A couple weeks later i experience transmission issues and go down the rabbit hole of it being with a mechanic longer than i was able to drive it and in a month i put less than 1k miles.
Long story short the dealership never disclosed this issue along with other issues and so i did some research and figured the smart choice would to buy a new car off the lot since the bank would give me a lower apr and i wouldn’t have to stress about it functioning properly. I bought a 2025 Camry SE for 37k and traded the old truck in and rolled over 8k of negative equity so in total the loan on the camry is around $45,000 and the interest is 12%.
Now i find myself looking for advice and wanting to know if i did the right thing about clearing my old debt from my previous car by rolling it over into a car that i am able to drive. My monthly payments on the camry are $871 a month for 75 months and this is because my credit was so new it wasn’t showing up on credit reports so i had co-signers on both vehicles just to get approved. If anyone has been in something similar i would appreciate the feedback and i admit it was probably dumb to get a bigger loan since im finding trouble being able to pay it however so far ive been able to but it has been very difficult financially.