Sunday, December 30, 2012

It's A New Car!

So, QUITE unexpectedly this past weekend, Daniel and I BOUGHT A CAR. Yes, that's right. We passed a new marriage milestone! Scary and exciting all at the same time...

Background Story:

I've had a white 2003 Saturn L300 (basically like their Camry or Accord) since my senior year in high school. Basically about 6 1/2 years. It's been a fantastic car. Our goal was for it to make it through our time at seminary--mostly because it was paid for, which = NO car payment! Woo hoo! We have been blessed to make it 2 1/2 years of marriage without one. Well, wouldn't ya know, the Saturn just had to start acting up. And when I mean acting up, I mean transmission issues. YIKES! Just the word alone sounds expensive! We made it into town for the Holidays and decided once all the festivities were over we would take it in to a transmission specialist. Daniel and my dad took it to Trans Tech in Conway (cannot say enough good things about these guys! ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL! If you ever have transmission problems, take your car to them!). Not even 2 hours later, he called Daniel and said we needed to completely replace the transmission. $1500-$2000!! Well, the Saturn is only worth $3000 in top condition, so we were faced with a huge decision. Do we spend that much money to fix it and then something else go wrong soon after? Do we just try to trade it--even $1000 is better than nothing? Can we afford a car payment on a seminary budget? The list goes on and on. What made it more stressful is we HAD to make a decision that day because it would take 3 full days to fix the transmission and we are leaving for Louisville soon! Oy!

My parents have some connections at Smith Ford in Conway, so we decided just to go over and talk to them, explain our situation, and see if they had anything pre-owned that could work for us. Mr. Kenny Ketcheside told us he just had a 2011 Ford Fusion traded in last week and he thought he could give us a good deal for it. We test drove it, and LOVED it! We were fearful that it was out of our price range though--just because it was newer and only had 43,000 miles on it. Needless to say, we were VERY pleasantly surprised! Not only did he give us a great price for the Fusion, he looked at the Saturn and gave us $2000 trade-in!! We could not believe it! With the trade-in credit, we were able to finance it and negotiate affordable monthly payments. WE COULD NOT BELIEVE IT! Saturday morning, we cleaned out the Saturn, drove it down to Ford, signed the papers, and drove away in our new car! It still seems kind of surreal but I'm sure that will all change once we start having to make payments on it. Lol.

Here it is!


Smith Ford took SUCH great care of us, we will do what we can to always do business with them! I absolutely adore this car---it drives so well and is SO roomy! It's weird to think about, but we had to consider if it could fit car seats in the back and baby stuff in the trunk! (NOT that we are pregnant! Or close to it! lol). Thankful the Lord worked out all the details and we now have a dependable car to drive back and forth to Louisville.