Buying A New Hot Rod

By: Sam | January 16, 2008 | Category: Home and Family

So long Charlie, hello, Big Al. That’s right, I finally took the plunge and parted ways with my old car, Charlie. And even though parting is such sweet sorrow, I couldn’t be happier with my new ride.

Before I could buy Al, I had to first figure out what to do with Charlie. I weighed the pros and cons of trading in vs. selling, which included looking up Charlie’s value (priceless, of course) in the Kelley Blue Book. And after reading Nancy’s post, I also considered purple cargoing the donation route. For me, selling Charlie was the best option, because it added some extra money to my down payment.

Since I had been shopping around for a couple of months, I had a pretty good idea of what make and model I wanted. And after a quick assessment of how energy efficient this new car would be, my next step was to figure out if I could really afford it. To do so, I used Consumer Reports’ online calculator, which enabled me to play with different figures, including my loan term and interest rate.

Speaking of, a key step to my car buying process was researching my financing options and finding the best loan. After comparing rates and terms from multiple finance sources like my bank, credit union, and potential car dealers, I decided to go with a loan from my credit union. I did a quick check of my credit report through annualcreditreport.com, just to make sure all my info was correct, and then applied for the loan online. It really was easy as pie!

With my financing in place, I was now ready for the fun part: wheelin’ and dealin’. Armed with advice from the pub “How to Get a Great Deal on a New Car” and my Dealer Visit worksheet I was ready for business. I checked a couple of car buying sites to see what the going sale price was in my area and then I stared negotiating for the price I wanted and could afford. And before I knew it, I was cruisin’ around town in Big Al.

All in all, the entire process wasn’t as bad as I imagined. Feel free to add any tips or stories you have for our readers who’re thinking about buying a car as well.

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Vehicle Fuel Economy

By: Sommer | December 07, 2007 | Category: Home and Family

In August, we traded in my husband’s beloved sports car for a new – well, new-to-us – car. We finally decided it was time to become adults and get a 4-door with some hauling capacity. Being new homeowners, we continuously found it difficult to haul more than groceries in our sports car and 2-door coupe. And forget about picking people up from the airport, that required us to bring both cars – one for people and one for luggage!

Initially my husband drove the car to work. Since I only drive about 4 miles per day – round trip to the Metro – the coupe was fine for me to cruise around town in. On the weekends, though, it was such a treat riding in the new car with its heated leather seats and sunroof.gas pump

We were very impressed with the car at first because, since it’s an all wheel drive wagon, we expected it to get SUV-like gas mileage. To our pleasant surprise, our average miles per gallon with my husband driving the car 30 highway miles round trip to work and on various weekend outings was about 23 - 24 miles per gallon. So, when I started driving the car a few weeks ago (since gas is getting more expensive) I thought it would be a great test to see if it was actually better, money and gas mileage wise, for me to drive the car my short 4 miles a day and continue to use it for weekend driving. Since the car has a neat dashboard gadget that automatically calculates average miles per gallon I was ready to see what happened! How disappointed was I to watch my mpg relatively plummet?!?! Now, as it stands today, I’m down to 17.7 miles per gallon!!! YIKES!

Based on the information on fueleconomy.gov I’m right at the average mpg for city driving which makes me feel a little better. The newly revised EPA MPG Estimates give the car a range of 17 mpg for city driving and 24 for highway which averages out at about 22 mpg. 

I guess I’ll start following some of their recommended tips for improving gas mileage and see whether my average mpg changes or not.

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