Things are tight right now for many Americans. If you find yourself among the growing number of car owners unable to make a car payment on time, there are steps you can take to get back on track and minimize any financial damage for the future.

On the latest episode of PennyWise, host Nat Cardona talks with Kimberly Palmer of NerdWallet about how borrowers can mange the car payments they can't make.

Nerdwallet explains tips for booking domestic and international flights as well as how to use travel rewards to your benefit.

Read the NerdWallet article here!

About this program

Nat Cardona is host of PennyWise as well as Lee Enterprise's true-crime podcast Late Edition: Crime Beat Chronicles. Lee Enterprises produces many national, regional and sports podcasts. Learn more here.

Episode transcript

Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:

Welcome to Pennywise Lee Enterprises podcast. I'm your host, Nat Cardona

Let's be real here for a second. Times are tough. High car prices and rising interest rates are squeezing people's budgets. If you find yourself among the growing number of car owners unable to make a car payment on time, there are steps you can take to get back on track and minimize any financial damage for the future.

Nerdwallet personal finance expert Kimberly Palmer joins us today with more on that.

Are people seeing more of that these days? Right. And let's be honest here, regardless of what your car maker model you're buying, it's usually going to be at least a few hundred dollars.

And it's that's not chump change. Right. So if you are experiencing that financial strain, that hardship, what do you do when you know, if you look at the 15th on the calendar and you're like, oh, no, that payment's coming up. I'm not going to be able to make it. That sets in a lot of panic for a lot of people.

So what would be the first step to take? Right. And I'm thinking back to my younger years and when unfortunately, Financial Times were not the best in my life and really strapped for cash with that first job out of college, that kind of thing and needing to make payments. I can only attest to my story when I've heard from other people.

There's some shame or embarrassment when you aren't able to make those important payments that come every month. Surely I'm guessing your advice would be don't ignore the problem. You have to call that lender because what what's what happens if you don't?

When we're talking about making car payments on a car you own versus leasing, is it kind of the same thing, same process?

Yeah, sure. All good things to keep in mind. Anything else on car financing, car loans at this tough time with inflation going on.

Amen to that and can really ruin you in the future. So great advice. Great advice to live by literally day to day.

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