Short answer:
Maybe Kayak fishing or a lake boat would be just as much fun for the family?
Long answer:
I was going to agree with Rumrunner, until he back peddled. From my experience I have never met a 23 year old that is pulling down enough cash to support a wife and two kids while saving for retirement, a house, two cars and college money for two in the long term, while also having enough short term money to pay for after school sports activities, ballet class, music lessons, braces, medical expenditures, dental care, football, a family dog and vacations. (Did you know that if you put $40,000 into a retirement fund today at age 23 you could have over $1,000,000.00 by age 65?)
I know we live in a world where we want what we want and we will go into debt to get it, but it’s just not good sound advice. Sure you could get a used parker if you take out a loan for $40,000 at say 7% over what 10 years? That’s a monthly payment of $464.43 with a total payback of $55,732.29 accounting for the total interest payback of $15,732.29. (What else could I do with that money? Put a down payment on a house! Put the kids thru college! Buy that new washer and dryer? Get a car, truck or van?)
Now I could be wrong, maybe you and your wife who are in your early 20’s somehow where the smart ones, you went to college and got good jobs and are each pulling down 75K a year for a total of $150K total a year. If this is the case GO FOR IT! But if your pulling in 25K to 30K each for a total of $50 to $60K a year, save the money for the house, sports, vacations, cars, and repairs, not to mention taking care of elderly parents and their needs when the time comes.
Have you heard how the government is printing money and devaluing the dollar and holding down interest rates? Well it’s true. What people don’t seem to understand is the other side of the coin, to get that money back (the stuff they printed) all they have to do is raise interest rates. (The interest is pulled from the equation and taken out of circulation basically) Thus causing the dollar to increase in value. When this happens it makes the price of things go up (aka: inflation) Now because of the current economic climate we have been printing a ton of money so within the next few years (government says they will hold rates low until 2014) we will need to raise interest rates. That means the home loan today at 3.5% will someday be a rate of 20% (this is hyper inflation) Milk, bread, food, gas, chicken, hotdogs, you name it…the price will shoot up! Manufactures will say the cost of shipping has gone up, a bad crop, no feed, 15 percent ethanol blah blah blah, but the fact is by 2014 every six weeks the federal interest rate will increase .25 points until your eyes shoot out of your head!
This should be no problem for someone with a house, (3.25% fixed loan on $300K) a car ($35K fixed at $4.75%) and a secure job (75K a year with health benefits). But for the rest of America, the 23 million people without jobs or the 100 million working in low wage areas…it’s not gonna be pretty. And when you try to sell that boat you paid $40K for that’s over ten years maybe 15 years old to people who can’t afford to put food on the table, forget about it, Bad investment. My advice, look at the smaller 2120 Parker, it’s towable, so no docking fees and better on gas.
