Buying Another Car Experience

I think most people dread doing their taxes, going to the dentist, going to the doctor, and you can put your own “dread” in here. One thing I’ve always dreaded in the past was buying a new car or another car.  I enjoy the thoughts of getting a new car, but I don’t like the whole process of finding one and then meeting the car salesman and going through the purchasing of it.  Yesterday we bought another car. It is considered “a second car,” as we didn’t use our current car as a trade in.  Three weeks ago we found a minivan on the internet that we liked. We drove to the sales lot and looked at it without driving it.  We talked to a very good and professional salesman named Aaron and we convinced him we were just looking. It’s probably the first time I’ve ever walked away from a potential purchase and felt really good about it.

I needed more time to think about it and since it was the first one we saw, we wanted to continue looking around. Well our internet search didn’t turn up another acceptable minivan within 125 miles. So we started looking at other options. Maybe a smaller car would work for us.  Three weeks later we had some finances in place and we decided to pursue the minivan again.  When we checked on it on the internet they had lowered the price by $1300.00

We did the drive around thing, talked to Aaron the salesman and then started the negotiation.  We had a ceiling on what we wanted our monthly payments to be and we had the backing of our credit union. A credit union this particular dealership did good business with.  Their first offer back to us was to lower it another $500.00.  We liked that but wanted a lower monthly payment.  We were determined to get the lower one and it paid off.  They got it down to what we thought was acceptable and the interest rate was even lowered by by .5%. 

Once we agreed on a price for the car, it went to the financial guy who proceeded to try and sell us on warranties and loan protection. We declined both. Some of you reading this might be asking why we would decline a warranty, well here is why. Eight years ago when we bought “Fred” the Xterra, we paid $2,400.00 for an extended warranty and nothing happened to the Xterra. A couple of years after the warranty expired, Fred broke down three times and we paid out $3,000.00 on expenses. Money that we actually had in our pockets.  We didn’t want to pay any more than we had to for the new car. Yes, we are risking breakdowns, but that’s a given with cars. I’ve seen brand new cars broken down on the side of the road and they probably had the warranty to get it fixed, but experience with warranties on our side tells us we are willing to risk it and do our best to afford to pay for anthing that breaks down, hopefully in about five or six years. 

Whereas in the past we’ve struggled with the car buying experience, this time, we had a great experience.  Now its time for a Sunday cruise somewhere.