400 months and a car
Yesterday was my 400 month birthday! What did you get me? I got myself a car. No, really. Gretchen and I found a little Dodge Neon that we pretty much fell in love with. It's an '05, which might be the newest used car I've ever owned. My father-in-law checked it out and couldn't find anything wrong with it, and he said he hadn't seen any cars that nice for what we wound up paying for it. We had to pay for it in a rather unconventional way though. It was a Saturday, and my preferred bank was closed. I had enough in our checking account to pay for about half the car. My in-laws were with me, and they offered to pay for the other half. We'll get a loan from the bank to pay them back. I'm not sure how that will work exactly, but we should be able to get a basic personal loan to do this.
About the only downside to the car so far is that the CD player doesn't play CD-RWs. I'll have to figure out how I want to listen to podcasts. I know, this is a tiny quibble, especially since the last car I bought (the Kia Rio) didn't even have a working radio. I'll figure something out.
After the car-buying fun, we went to our annual church auction. Gretchen and I were on the auction committee this year, so we were a little more involved than usual. I ran the sound board (my typical post), and I also created a spreadsheet to keep track of everyone's bidding totals. It was a mess. My bro-in-law Chad and I tried our best to keep up, but it was just too much for two people to do, especially with the silent auction added in. I was trying to add up totals on my cell phone calculator, which is hardly the ideal tool for something like that. We raised about $3800, but so far we've collected less than $3000. We have record of everything that everyone bought, but it's not like we can hire the Mafia to shake down our fellow churchgoers.
About the only downside to the car so far is that the CD player doesn't play CD-RWs. I'll have to figure out how I want to listen to podcasts. I know, this is a tiny quibble, especially since the last car I bought (the Kia Rio) didn't even have a working radio. I'll figure something out.
After the car-buying fun, we went to our annual church auction. Gretchen and I were on the auction committee this year, so we were a little more involved than usual. I ran the sound board (my typical post), and I also created a spreadsheet to keep track of everyone's bidding totals. It was a mess. My bro-in-law Chad and I tried our best to keep up, but it was just too much for two people to do, especially with the silent auction added in. I was trying to add up totals on my cell phone calculator, which is hardly the ideal tool for something like that. We raised about $3800, but so far we've collected less than $3000. We have record of everything that everyone bought, but it's not like we can hire the Mafia to shake down our fellow churchgoers.