1- Well, the bad news came in Tuesday. The girls and I were up in the city for doctor's appointments with MIL when hubby got a call from our mechanic...there were metal shavings in the oil filter, which equals dead car. So, MIL and I stopped by one car dealership for a look at vehicles to see what the price ranges were.
2- Hubby decided on Tuesday night that he would take Thursday off work so that we could go buy a car. Of course, that meant we needed to come up with some amount of money for car buying.
3- Wednesday was spent calling MIL a billion times with questions and concerns...her talking to her credit union about cashing out her CD early, and me calling ours to find out if they could get the money in our account right away so that we could write a check on Thursday. Also, researching the inventory of about a dozen car dealers.
4- We took an extremely scenic route to the first car dealership we wanted to check out a vehicle out...and because of that detour, we rearranged our whole shopping plan. We test drove 3 different vehicles, a 2005 GMC Envoy XL, a 2006 Dodge Durango with third row seating, and a 2006 Ford Explorer with third row seating. Hubby really was rooting for the Ford before we test drove any of them. I was rooting for the Envoy. Hubby ended up liking the Ford the LEAST, the Dodge was in the middle, and the Envoy was his favorite. As for me, the Envoy was my favorite, but I probably would have put the Ford next, then the Durango. Obviously, since we agreed, we ended up purchasing the Envoy.
5- Buying the car took longer than I had anticipated (but with all the getting lost and running around, I wasn't all that surprised!) I had originally said "no way" to car shopping on Thursday, because my bible study group was meeting at our house at 6:30 pm...so when we finally got done at the dealer (about 3:45 pm) I called to tell people to let themselves in if I wasn't there, and to change the menu from stuffed peppers to stuffed crust pizza. I got home about 5 minutes before people started to show up, and was just lighting candles (the whole house reeked of onions from my prep work for the stuffed peppers) and opening blinds when everyone arrived. It all worked out okay in the end, though.
6- We had to say goodbye to our little red Saturn, which we traded in...and also to our blue Olds (that we had JUST UNDER one year...not making the list for best purchases ever...) which was picked up by the salvage yard (had we found a way to deliver it to them 90 miles away, they would have paid us $150 or $200)
7- Today has been all about car insurance quotes, since we only have 5 days to get our insurance updated or changed. So far Progressive Direct has the lowest quote, hands down. Still waiting to hear from our current agent (and not thrilled that he hasn't called yet) and hubby's family's agent (who was supposed to call sometime after 5:30...it's now 7:30 and we haven't gotten a call.) So, by Monday I hope to have all the quotes and a decision made!
Here's a picture of what our new car pretty much looks like, from Edmunds.com:
More quick takes at Conversion Diary!
What a busy week, I'm glad it all worked out with the car. Good luck with insurance. We have a friend who works for Geico but he's an actuary and not an agent.
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