I promised I'd update ya'll on what has been going on and it's not anything dramatic but stressful...we bought new cars. Not just one car but two. See the way this was supposed to work was since I work from home, I would give up my 11 year old car (that still ran wonderfully and looked brand spankin' new but still, it's 11 years old) and I would get the Mr's 5 year old car so there would be no car payment still for me and he'd get a new car. In 5 years, we'd do it all over again so there would never be a car payment for me because let's face it, it's stupid to have a car payment for a car that sits there 99% of the year.
Well, about two months ago, the Mr got some spammy ad from his car manufacturer telling him how much his car was currently worth and come in and buy another one. This got his wheels turning. He started doing even more research than he was already doing (he'd been doing it for a year...thereby driving me slowly insane.) He started to think that maybe both of us getting new cars was a possibility. I didn't put a whole lot of stock on it but as he ran scenario after scenario front ways, sideways and backwards in English, Chinese, Japanese, Swahili and Latin, the numbers made it seem doable if our 15% rule off of sticker still applied as it had for every car purchase we'd ever made.
You need to know my complete and utter LOATHING of the car buying process. It isn't a stretch to tell you that thinking about it makes me cry, gives me anxiety and pisses me off all at the same time. Talking or hearing about it incessantly (which has been my life for the past month) puts me on edge 24/7. I have had nothing but shitty experiences buying cars my whole life. My dad scarred me when I bought my first new car when he introduced himself as "asshole" to the car dealer. You can imagine I wasn't pleased when they sold a shiny red, first edition Ford Probe out from under me when we went back a day or so later. I'm sure they were more than happy to stick it to "asshole." *rolling eyes* I don't appreciate people who have power over me wielding it like a child that's found their dad's gun and I especially don't like the condescension. It almost always ends in me nearly needing to be restrained from punching someone in the throat or family jewels. I've left the car buying up to the Mr the past few times because I know my fuse is shorter than it used to be and that's not good if bunking in jail isn't on my to do list. (That is sarcasm for those without the ability to detect it.) ;-)
We ended up selling my beloved 11 year old car to the Mr's co-worker who fell in love with it. Did I mention it had 20,400 original miles on it, we replaced the headlights and trunk struts and just gave it a once over maintenance oil change filling up all other fluids, etc? I cried. I mean I was kind enough to wait until she was out of sight but I'm still pretty scarred over it. I look outside expecting to see "Big Blue" and she's not there anymore. But she's in a new home that includes a first time driver who loves her and a mom who loves her so much she may not give the first time driver the chance to drive it. So I feel better about it...I guess. We sold it for pretty much full price or almost $2000 over KBB for it. This helped immensely. While we were hoping to retain some profit from the sale, it wasn't to be since the dealership was pretty firm on how low they were willing to go and we knew by a try just an hour prior to that that we weren't going to get much lower. So between the money from the sale of my car, the money we planned to spend from last years tax return, the Mr's car and a loan for him, we BOTH got new cars last Thursday.
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Background removed because I'll be damned if I'm giving the dealer free advertising!
You can't tell very well but my car is black and the Mr's is pacific blue. |
Mine was free and clear (yeah boy!) and he has a loan on his that replaced his previous loan and is only $30 more a month. Not too jazzed about that but we've stayed where we've wanted for 20 years so being a couple bucks over even with inflation isn't bad. I never thought I'd pay even a few bucks over $300 for a car payment. Erg.
Now, why wouldn't I give the dealership free advertising if they gave us such a great deal? Because they kept us there for 6 hours!!! We're talking the deal was done in 90 minutes and we handed them heaps of cash and a car, no financing through them required and 6 effin' hours!!! I was NOT A HAPPY GIRL! I had the worst migraine of my life. We were there from 4:15 to 10:15pm. Do you think they even offered to let us leave for dinner? Nope. Everyone was griping about being hungry but we just kept sitting there. I mean these guys were actually somewhat pleasant to deal with unlike the douchebag the Mr dealt with at the previous place before we drove out here but the incompetence and time suck was enough to make me not want to do this again for 10 years. (Given how little I drive, I'll probably have 10-12,000 miles on it at the end of 10 years so I'm good with that.) By the time we drove home, it was late. We skipped dinner and just had a banana push pop which stopped that hangry feeling and we went to bed.
My neck was so screwed up from the headache the night before that I'm STILL having issues with it 3 days later. I'm desperately trying to get the new car smell out of it because even opening the door gives me a serious sinus headache. I've got a jasmine air freshener trying to do my bidding and I'm praying it works or I'll have to strap on my painting mask with vapor barrier filters. I'm sure I won't get pulled over at all wearing that.
So that is how we spent the last part of last week and the weekend was spent doing some busy work. I'm just glad all of this crap is over with and hopefully I never have to hear about cars for at least 4 1/2 years when the Mr begins researching his next car and I develop another twitch.
Do you like the car buying process?
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