Used vehicle purchase. Gap insurance?

I have always had gap insurance on my cars, but they were all purchased new. On a used car the depreciation wouldn't be as high so I might be inclined to forgo it.

Small story: Several years ago I had to "sell" my car to my mom in order to qualify for a mortgage. The gap insurance wouldn't transfer over but I was between a rock and a hard place and didn't really care. Couple years later my car gets rear ended. I still owed over $10k on it, blue book was $7k and the damages were $6400. To this day I feel so incredibly lucky the insurance company didn't total my car. I would have been screwed and wouldn't have had money to go get another vehicle. Gap insurance would have taken care of all my worries in that situation.

My BFF used hers last year. Car totaled. Insurance paid roughly $11,000. She still owed almost $19,000K. So for her --it paid off. But she had a bad loan. (High interest rate, really financed more than she could afford).

I put a huge amount down on my recent car and got a short loan (36 months). It wasn't worth it for me to get gap insurance.

Gap insurance saved my ass when my car was rear ended. The cosmetic damage was only slight, but the tiny sport car that hit me got under my crossover and totalled the frame. It was still tough to get a new car after that, though, since I had no down payment and only had about a year of payment history. It definitely helped, though, by paying off my loan.

I work for an insurance company. While we don't offer Gap insurance as a part of the auto insurance, we don't charge for it if you get a vehicle loan through us. We often refinance new auto purchases and save our customers the cost of Gap insurance and sometimes have a lower interest rate.

I bought a 2015 last year that had super low miles from the dealer - it was a trade in from an early terminated lease. I bought the GAP insurance. I put a sizable downpayment on it (by my standards anyway), but not enough to where I felt comfortable NOT having GAP.

I don't know all the details, but i had a friend who had traded in a newer car due to a divorce and needed to get her ex H's name off of it. She had to roll over some of the loan or something…not sure. Anyway, hit an icy patch and totaled the new car about 6 months into. She had GAP on the new car and it totally saved her ass. I had that in mind when I bought this car. The car depreciates some ridiculous amount when you drive off the lot - I could be totaled on the way home from the dealership and totally screwed. 

I also got the service package and have been very pleased with it so far.

DH had a used vehicle awhile back. He was sitting at a stop light and was rear ended by a woman going about 40 mph. He was fortunate in that he walked away however his vehicle was totaled and we did not have gap insurance and so we had to continue to make payments on it. The insurance of the woman who hit him would NOT pay anymore than market value of the vehicle. It is pretty sucky to be paying for a vehicle that is in a junkyard.

If you had the money to pay the difference in what your car was worth and what you owed, you would have put that money down when you bought the car so you'd not ever be upside down. So since you haven't got the money, it seems that the gap insurance would be worth it.

I wouldn't do it. I'd buy less of a car with a shorter term pay off if I had to so that I didn't get myself upside down.