The (@$%#) Art of Buying an Automobile, Part One

So. The Wife and I have decided it is time to get a slightly larger auto, what with our new addition to the family and the immense amount of stuff that seems to simply “come with” girls of any age. (It may also be largely due to the fact that our 12 year old Maxima, the only car we have that can fit all of us at once, has over 200K miles on it, has no A/C, no radio, won’t pass emissions testing and has tags that expired in April…) ANYWAY…We do things a little differently in our family, though it all seems to somehow make sense to us. What with gas prices being astronomically high these days, many people are trying to cheaply offload their SUV’s in favor of these fancy hybrids and smaller autos that get much better gas mileage and are desperately trying to avoid larger, less gas-miserly vehicles. These people are certainly smart. However, some other also smart people that don’t get talked about a lot are those people who go out at times like these and look specifically for autos others are trying to get rid of and thus end up getting superb deals and finding themselves able to afford ALOT more car than they originally imagined. That’s right, The Wife and I are looking for SUV’s. You may think this is odd, but it makes sense to us to pay a few thousand dollars less for a car that will cost us a little extra in gas prices. Most importantly we really don’t drive all that much TBH, with church being about the farthest we regularly drive. To make a long story short, I hope to be driving a 2002-2004 Jeep Liberty Sport by the time I sit down to write another blog. My next blog will chronicle my journey through the maze of financing, credit, car dealers and raw desire for things simply out of my price range…