Automobiles in 2005 - The Bad, Ugly & Good

In that order. We've had a crazy last week or so w/ automobiles in our household. Last week before traveling to OH we found that the that Mercedes (Mel) needed new brakes, brake pads, rotors, and shocks. Yea we were floored to say the least as it was going to cost about $1G to get those repairs. They said I would be ok driving to OH since it was interstate driving, but not to do a lot of city driving and we could get those repairs when I got back this week. So on Monday when I got home Eric took Mel to run some errands and see some customers and noticed yet another noise. After stopping by the dealer we find out it is the catalytic convertor which was $1500 in just parts. So we decided Mel must go and fast. Eric's car, the Explorer was also leaking something, so we knew it had to go into the shop soon, too. After some deliberation, we decided we could go down to one car, save some money on our car payments and just make due to get some other bills paid off for the time being. So, off we went shopping for a new car. I get a GM discount so we wanted to get something new and we found out that since we have a substantial amount of negative equity we'd have to get something new b/c we'd never get a loan on a used car w/ that much neg. eq. We found one we liked, but the banks were all closed b/c of MLK, Jr day so we headed home.

Tuesday rolled around and the finanial guy made calls all day and as of 5:00 hadn't got anything approved yet. We were asking for a large loan to say the least. However, what the banks don't see is that we were trading both cars in so we actually reduce our payments and save some money. We were looking at a Tahoe. We thought, ok, maybe we are asking for too much money so we told them to see what they could do about finding us a trailblazer.

So yesterday our sales guy called and told us that the only way we could get the Tahoe would be to have a $20G downpayment. Are you serious? If we had that kind of downpayment, we'd just come in a buy a used car w/ cash. Good lord! We hung up the Tahoe and Dan, the sales guy, started working on finding us a trailblazer. That was more difficult than we thought. We have a few necessaties we wanted and they didn't have what we wanted on the lot, so they would have to check auctions and other dealers. We figured it would be at least a few days before we heard back...

but....

shortly after 5:00 last night Dan called to tell us they finally got us approved for the Tahoe if we could put at least a little down. Thankfully his parents had already offered to help us out a little with the downpayment so we could get out from under that $3G+ work/repairs we would have to put in both of our current cars. So needless to say off the dealer we went and drove home with a Tahoe. It is a sweet ride and there is no reason we won't be able to keep it for 10+ years. The payments were a bit more than we wanted, but it is still less than what we were paying. And we can totally make due on 1 car. We just have to make a few sacrifices. So something has went our way. We were both feeling like things were going downhill for us on the money side and it was scary. This weekend we are sitting down and looking at our finances and coming up with a STRICT budget to get some stuff paid off. I think we are on the right track now and things are looking much brighter. Yay! We just needed a little sunshine. It is stressful buying that expensive of a car, but at the same time it is a reliable car w/ a warranty, cheaper repairs if/when that time comes, and American made. No more foreign cars for us!