We are owners of a new honda civic coupe. Decided to go new because the process is SOOOOO much easier than buying used. Took us an hour in the dealership, no haggling and got invoice price
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You won't regret buying a Honda. Toyota has caught up, if not surpassed, Honda in quality, but you can still count on a Honda to run 200+k miles if you take care of it. Our current game plan is to drive our Accords for 10 years, replacing one every 5 years so that we never have two car loans at once. I might go wild in 2010 and look at CRVs or RAV4s, which are really station wagons shaped like SUVs (shhhhh...don't tell the soccer moms!)
We found that buying a new Honda wasn't much more expensive than buying a late model used one because the good ones are all certified now, which raises their prices. As I'm sure you noticed, Hondas don't lose value nearly as fast as a lot of other brands. Also, we were able to get 2.9% interest on the car loan for a new one (3 years ago) through the dealership and would have been paying around twice that much if we'd have gotten a used car loan through our credit union. We figured that if the overall price difference between new and used wasn't much, we might as well go with a new car that had a full warranty.
Oh, and Civics get wicked mileage. I'll likely test-drive one when we replace my car in 2010 as I've heard that they're better on highways than they used to be, but I'm leaning toward something that can hold more stuff.
4 weeks of vacation is great! I get 12 days, which isn't terrible for a job in the US, but am very jealous!
Your right about honda's holding thier value.. they were about the same price as a new one! We didn't get as good of a interest rate - 4.99%, but it's better then banks are offering right now which is about 6.25%. We looked at the Toyota Yaris, but it's not as nice of a car and was only slighlty less expensive than the civic once you added on the options we wanted. Plus the civic is a nicer looking car than the yaris.
I would have loved to have only had one car payment, but alas we just got the subaru last year. Oh well. I guess the trade off is that for over 11 years of marriage we managed to have only one car which has saved us a ton of money.
And as far a vacation, I'm jealous too. I only get 3 weeks and I've been working at my job for 7 years to get that! But that is one bonus about going to work for a non-profit like that, they can't pay very much so they give you better perks like more vacation.
I get 12 days for the first three years, then 15 days for years 3-10, then 22 days after that. My dept allows incredibly flexible hours, though, so I can get time off pretty much whenever I need it. I also get 10 days of sick time, which I don't feel bad about using because it's exceptionally rare that my absence from the office is an inconvenience for anyone else.
It's so novel that Adam and I both have Labor Day off work this weekend! He gets 10 federal holidays. I get 5-6 of them when our office is closed, plus 5 optional holidays out of a list that includes the other federal holidays and a bunch of religious ones.
Oh - and the reason we were deciding between the yaris and civic is because of the gas mileage. They get the best highway mileage of any non-hybrid car. We don't need a hauling vehicle anymore since we got the subraru, we just needed a small, fairly cheap, fuel efficent car. And the cheap part is why we didn't really look at hybrids since they add quite a premium onto the cost of the car.
We found that buying a new Honda wasn't much more expensive than buying a late model used one because the good ones are all certified now, which raises their prices. As I'm sure you noticed, Hondas don't lose value nearly as fast as a lot of other brands. Also, we were able to get 2.9% interest on the car loan for a new one (3 years ago) through the dealership and would have been paying around twice that much if we'd have gotten a used car loan through our credit union. We figured that if the overall price difference between new and used wasn't much, we might as well go with a new car that had a full warranty.
Oh, and Civics get wicked mileage. I'll likely test-drive one when we replace my car in 2010 as I've heard that they're better on highways than they used to be, but I'm leaning toward something that can hold more stuff.
4 weeks of vacation is great! I get 12 days, which isn't terrible for a job in the US, but am very jealous!
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I would have loved to have only had one car payment, but alas we just got the subaru last year. Oh well. I guess the trade off is that for over 11 years of marriage we managed to have only one car which has saved us a ton of money.
And as far a vacation, I'm jealous too. I only get 3 weeks and I've been working at my job for 7 years to get that! But that is one bonus about going to work for a non-profit like that, they can't pay very much so they give you better perks like more vacation.
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It's so novel that Adam and I both have Labor Day off work this weekend! He gets 10 federal holidays. I get 5-6 of them when our office is closed, plus 5 optional holidays out of a list that includes the other federal holidays and a bunch of religious ones.
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