Buying a car - Let the games begin.
I want to start this post by being grateful for my 92 Jetta that has brought us from point A to point B and for sporadic spontaneous adventures for many years now.
But the Jetta is in dire need for a host of major repairs and we see this car as a total money pit. We have tossed more money at this car than anything else and to be honest, this car is what has kept us on this slippery slope to financial recovery. Over the past 6 months, everytime we had scraped together a few hundred dollars to repay our credit card (Dare I say it) debt, the car would die on us and we had to take that money and have it repaired.
Being from the city, we had never really depended on a car to get around but now that we’re deep in the mountains, a car is crucial to our everyday lives.
A few months ago, we created a CAR fund and started looking for a new car.
My philosophy has always been to purchase a car for no more than 3K and drive it into the ground. I would buy the car outright and then not have to deal with monthly payments. So I set out to find a car for no more than 3K. Having been down this road many many times before (this would have been my 4th 3K car in 10 years.) I started getting blinding migranes as I would open the paper or log on to a classifieds site to look for one. I could just see us buying another 3K car and being members in the frequent tow-ers club.
Now, since I am more in tune with my intuition… ie. I now listen to it… I knew this was a bad sign and that I had to think of a different kind of solution.
Step 1 figuring out what we want
