The New Car

After months of shopping for a more economical vehicle for Justin's 45-minute daily commute, we finally broke down and bought a new car!!! We were really planning to buy a used vehicle. Justin had spent hours a day scouring the ads on Craigslist and Auto Trader, looking for the best deal on a used car. We drove through every car dealer parking lot within a 2 hour radius of our home. We test drove Audis, Toyotas, Hondas, Mazdas and Cadillacs. Finally we settled on a 2009 Hyundai Sonata. We certainly weren't planning on buying a brand new car, but they were offering some great promotions and it ended up that the difference between a good used Sonata and a new Sonata with 100,000 mile warranty was only about $3,000. So, we took the bait and bought the car! We figured out that we were spending about $700 a month on diesel with Justin commuting in the truck. So, since we were already spending more than enough on diesel to make a car payment, we figured we might as well have something to show for it! The dealership would only give us $10,000 trade-in on the truck, so we decided to just keep it. We'll park it in the garage and Justin can take it out every once in a while when he needs to help someone move. (Isn't that what big trucks are for anyway?) Actually, he needs it to carry his little fishing pontoon to the lake, so it's a good thing we didn't get rid of it. Anyway, we're excited about the new car. So far, it's been getting 33 miles per gallon...which beats the 17 mpg the truck was getting...plus gasoline is a lot cheaper than diesel!! Here's to saving money on transportation!!!