The van reached 211,000 miles and the radiator cracked. Brian took a gallon of water with him everyday and had to refill before he came home.
So he withdrew $7000 cash and we went to the local dealers. Our only requirement was that it had to be a Honda, Toyota or a newer Hyundai and have relatively low miles. We needed a commuter car as the van only got 18 mpg. We didn't want to pay more than $6500.
The first car we test drove was a Toyota Corolla with no power anything. It was fine but didn't thrill Brian. I spotted a Honda Civic at the rival dealer lot while on the Toyota test drive (ha!) so we went there next.
The Honda Civic was a 2002, power everything, A/C and had a CD player. It only had 92,000 miles and was in great condition. Well, it actually had about 143,000 kilometers as the car had come from Canada.
We test drove it and loved it! The list price was originally $7500 and we offered $6500 cash and that included all registration/DMV fees. They accepted. It was rather easy. I'm thinking they were glad of the cash and glad to get rid of a Canadian car.
Here's Brian pulling out the Ben Franklins. I was hoping we could get $1000 bills but having all those $100's was impressive too.
Picture of the car outside of the Goodwill Outlet store.
Brian had to get used to driving 100 kilometers/per hour on the highway and we may get the dashboard changed to miles.
I'm so thankful we were able to pay cash and I hope never to have a car payment the rest of my life. How refreshing it was to walk out of the dealership owning the car and not being a slave to the bank. It was a big sacrifice to save all of that money but totally worth it!
4 comments:
My parents have had two Honda Civics and love them. Congratulations on buying it debt free!
Amen to that - we plan on never having car payments again either. Looks like fab car too! :-)
There should be KMs and miles on the speedometer. I know here in Canada they have both. It will be KMs in white on the outside in big, and miles in orange a little smaller on the inside.
It's not too hard once you know the basic speed limits. 55m is 90k and 30m is 50k. Those are the most important. Just take a little sharpie and mark the numbers so you don't forget.
Car payments aren't always a bad thing. These days you can often find interest rates as low as 0%, so it's actually more beneficial to invest your cash.
Congrats on being able to do that, though. Not many people can say that.
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