I can't produce a title for a vehicle I just traded
The old truck is collateral for a loan. The place that made the loan expects that if you can't pay they can repossess that old truck. If you sell it they can't repossess it.  The dealer needs clean title to be able to buy the truck from you, so they can fix up the truck and sell it to somebody else. I am assuming the the lender has filed paperwork with the state to show their lien on the title. Your options are three: As to option 2: If the deal still makes sense the new car dealer can send the $9,000 to the lender that you forgot about. That will of course increase the amount of money you have to borrow.  You will also run into the problem that this loan that you forgot to mention on your credit application may cause them to rethink the decision to loan you the money. "If your fiancée took a title loan out on your truck you won't be able to trade it in for another vehicle until you pay the loan. The dealer will likely take your ""slightly newer"" truck back because you won't be able to produce the title for the trade until the other debt is settled. Title loans are a terrible idea. You should probably try to pay that loan off as quickly as possible regardless, because interest rates are terrible on these loans.  I will update this answer if you add details about the circumstances of the current loan on your truck."
In some states there are significantly higher automobile insurance costs and higher coverage requirements for vehicles that have a lien on them.  I suspect this is not your scenario, or you probably would not be considering holding the loan open.  But it is something to consider. If you live in a state where insurance coverage and costs depend on a clear title, I would certainly recommend closing the loan as soon as possible. "&gt;If you know that a company called Toyota with no access to any retained earnings...  Okay, we are talking at cross-purposes here.   I take it as axiomatic that speculative ventures by private actors is mostly a net good thing (e.g., grocery stores buying produce before the customer has handed over the gold, car-makers designing and building cars before they have been paid for end-to-end, etc...). Even if a lot of them fail, I take it as axiomatic that we would not have things like laptop computers and fresh oranges year-round and non-iron shirts without that kind of speculative investment.   I also take it as axiomatic that such speculative investment could not/would not exist without privately- or publicly-issued promissory notes. E.g., I do not think anyone would ever have made the first laptop computer, if doing so required directly handing previously-acquired gold coins to everyone involved in the design and construction.   A caveman with no money but infinite time could have built his own Macbook Pro with retina display: like everything else we have, it was dug up out of the ground by people no stronger than you or I. All the functionality is just ingenuity and machining, it's just stuff dug up and re-combined by people, not necessarily smarter than anyone else. The fact that it *has* been done by human beings, means, by definition, that it *can* be done by human beings.   Ergo, a caveman could have done it. Could have placed a man on the moon, or built himself a 60"" 1080p TV, or an iPod, or a nuclear bomb, or a Ferrari, or sent a satellite past the solar-system, anything at all. We don't have anything that he didn't have: just ingenuity, and whatever we dig up out of the ground.   But more realistically, the difference between us and cavemen is twofold:  - We have a historical record, and the accumulated ingenuity of millions of individual insights; and,  - We have an economy, based on credibility and promises, that allows things to be invented, tested, and made, before they are paid for.  I suggest that it is axiomatic that, for example, iPads would not exist if physical gold had to change hands at every step of development and manufacturing before it could occur, or at the instance of occurance. There is just no sane scenario where a product like that comes into existence without promises and speculative investment and loan-guarantees.   Same with fresh lettuce in winter, or plumbing or electricity or cable-TV.  You can't just trade a grain of gold for every gallon of water that comes out of your shower in real-time to a wet bill-collector, or stick some gold in the cable-jack for every minute of internet.   Someone is promising something, without having produced it yet. Whether you paid in advance, or they bill your the service later, value has changed hands on credit and promises. It's not a sane proposition that every transaction be a closed-loop, pay-as-you-go thing. Especially when you get into commercial transactions.   The modern world would not exist without credit markets, and credit markets cannot exist without something like fractional reserve banking. Demanding that everyone instantly reconcile every value-exchange with a physical transfer of gold or some such is not a sane proposition.   Would your cell-phone company pay someone to follow you around and collect grains of gold for every call? If so, would that person in turn be followed by the cell-tower owner, and so on?   Offering to ""pay in advance"" doesn't negate the conundrum: they still have to provide service, which may or may not be covered by your gram of gold. It's still a credit market, no matter which way the faucet runs. And a credit market means, ipso-facto, that more money is in circulation than has been printed." But.. what I really want to know.... is it illegal, particularly the   clause REQUIRING a trade in to qualify for the advertised price? The price is always net of all the parts of the deal. As an example they gave the price if you have $4000 trade in. If you have no trade in, or a trade in worth less than 4K, your final price for the new car will be more. Of course how do you know that the trade in value they are giving you is fair. It could be worth 6K but they are only giving you a credit of 4K. If you are going to trade in a vehicle while buying another vehicle the trade in should be a separate transaction. I always get a price quote for selling the old car before visiting the new car dealer. I do that to have a price point that I can judge while the pressure is on at the dealership.. Buying a car is a complex deal. The price, interest rate, length of loan, and the value of the trade in are all moving parts. It is even more complex if a lease is involved. They want to adjust the parts to be the highest profit that you are willing to agree to, while you think that you are getting a good deal. This is the fine print: All advertised amounts include all Hyundai incentives/rebates, dealer   discounts and $2500 additional down from your trade in value. +0% APR   for 72 months on select models subject to credit approval through HMF.   *No payments or 90 days subject to credit approval. Value will be added to end of loan balance. 15MY Sonata - Price excludes tax, title,   license, doc, and dealer fees. MSRP $22085- $2036 Dealer Discount -   $500 HMA Lease Cash - $500 HMA Value Owner Coupon - $1000 HMA Retail   Bonus Cash - $500 HMA Military Rebate - $500 HMA Competitive Owner   Coupon - $400 HMA College Grad Rebate - $500 HMA Boost Program - $4000   Trade Allowance = Net Price $12149. On approved credit. Certain   qualifications apply to each rebate. See dealer for details. Payment   is 36 month lease with $0 due at signing. No security deposit   required. All payment and prices include HMA College Grad Rebate, HMA   Military Rebate, HMA Competitive Owner Coupon and HMA Valued Owner   Coupon. Must be active military or spouse of same to qualify for HMA   Military Rebate. Must graduate college in the next 6 months or within   the last 2 years to qualify for HMA College Grad rebate. Must own   currently registered Hyundai to qualify for HMA Valued Owner Coupon.   Must own qualifying competitive vehicle to qualify for HMA Competitive   Owner Coupon. &gt; Mercedes and BMW both produce around 60,000 of their similarly priced level vehicles (S class and 7 series respectively) per year. Audi produces around 35,000 8 series vehicles.   Ridiculously contrived analogies.  Audi produces almost 1.5 *million* vehicles every year, and Mercedes a similar number; BMW produces nearly 2 million.  Each of them *actually* make (&amp; sell) more units in a single month than Tesla is claiming to be building the *capacity* to produce in a year.  And that is *without* all of the subsidies and tax-credit advantages that Tesla is leveraging (much less the free press). Your question is unanswerable as you haven't provided enough information. I.e. If those shares cost $1000 and you have $50000 ( or any number above $1000) of cash available in the account then you can't possibly free ride. I think your understanding of the free ride rule is incorrect. Basically what this rule is stating is that you have to have the cash when the trade is placed in order to settle the trade. Otherwise you are taking on margin (which you can't do in a cash account). So at order entry you have to have the cash to cover the purchase so it's able to be settled. If you do, no problem and you can sell that stock before trade settlement. There is no law that says you have to hold it past trade settlement. However, you cannot spend the same dollar more than once before it settles.  This site does a good job explaining this more throughly with examples: http://www.invest-faq.com/articles/trade-day-free-ride.html "Okay, definitive answer for this particular company (Toyota Finance) is (somewhat surprisingly, and glad I asked) it must be fully insured at all times, including liability, even if being stored.  I asked at a dealership and they answered ""just fire and theft (of course)"" but I ended up calling their finance department and the answer was the opposite. So there you go. Thanks for the answers (and for trying to talk me out of wasting money)." The buyer can get another cosigner or you can sell the car to pay off the loan. These are your only options if financing cannot be obtained independently. The other person has to decide that they want to be wholly responsible for the loan, and they have to be able to qualify for the loan. They are in essence purchasing the car from you with the sale price being the remaining balance of the loan.  You will then use the processed from the new loan to pay the old loan off completely. They will then take the bill of sale to the state DMV/MVA to register the car in their name. You should have them start with their bank for a new car loan.