New(er) car!
As some of you who follow me on FB already know, hubby was in a car accident about two weeks ago. He was driving a Mercury Sable. A Tahoe was in the lane next to him. A Caprice ran the light, t-boned the Tahoe, and the Tahoe sorta slid into hubby. Rear passenger door was caved in pretty badly, and the window was completely shattered. Hubby managed to drive away from the accident, the Tahoe had to be towed.
Because hubby's car was a '96 with several other things wrong with it, our insurance company decided to total the vehicle. We went shopping for used cars last weekend, and were so astonished at the high prices the various dealers were charging for vehicles with upwards of 50K miles on them that we gave up and started looking at bare-bones, but new, cars.
Fortunately, this is the end of the month, when the sales guys want to make all their numbers. We had been looking at a manual-shift Fiesta, and we might have been persuaded to buy an automatic-shift Focus, for the right price. Naturally, when we got to the dealership they had no idea about the bare-bones manual-shift Fiesta, so we had to convince them we really couldn't afford to spend a whole lot of money even if they didn't have that particular car.
The sales guy was actually pretty reasonable, all things considered, and we drove away with a two-year old vehicle with very low mileage, cruise control (hubby drives a lot for work, so that matters to him), and satellite radio capability. Now I just have to figure out how to get the satellite radio set up for us to pay for it (already emailed Sirius about that) and we're good to go. It's still more than we can really afford to spend, but hubby needs a car, so we took out a six-year note. Yes, I know that means we'll pay more in interest than if we took out a shorter note, but we did the deal we could afford. If we can get to a point in the next couple years where we can start doubling up on payments, that'll help, but right now we're pretty much stuck.
Because hubby's car was a '96 with several other things wrong with it, our insurance company decided to total the vehicle. We went shopping for used cars last weekend, and were so astonished at the high prices the various dealers were charging for vehicles with upwards of 50K miles on them that we gave up and started looking at bare-bones, but new, cars.
Fortunately, this is the end of the month, when the sales guys want to make all their numbers. We had been looking at a manual-shift Fiesta, and we might have been persuaded to buy an automatic-shift Focus, for the right price. Naturally, when we got to the dealership they had no idea about the bare-bones manual-shift Fiesta, so we had to convince them we really couldn't afford to spend a whole lot of money even if they didn't have that particular car.
The sales guy was actually pretty reasonable, all things considered, and we drove away with a two-year old vehicle with very low mileage, cruise control (hubby drives a lot for work, so that matters to him), and satellite radio capability. Now I just have to figure out how to get the satellite radio set up for us to pay for it (already emailed Sirius about that) and we're good to go. It's still more than we can really afford to spend, but hubby needs a car, so we took out a six-year note. Yes, I know that means we'll pay more in interest than if we took out a shorter note, but we did the deal we could afford. If we can get to a point in the next couple years where we can start doubling up on payments, that'll help, but right now we're pretty much stuck.