Blazze Blazze

So Danielle isn't really on the whole blogging scene. Oh well. And I would've posted sooner, but didn't realize that the request had gone to my junk mail. lol! Oh well. Again. I don't really have much to say. Since I've been back, Danielle and I have been quite thoroughly on the road to being a couple, rather than roommates with benefits. XD!

We had a great time car shopping this week. For the first time, we actually slowed ourselves down and thought logically about what we were doing. And we did have a few close calls - there was one car we both really liked, it was a sexy Chevrolet Malibu LTZ, 2006 - fully loaded. Awesome little car with decent fuel economy, but our payments were up around 270. We almost got it anyway. Not cool, considering we're still making payments of 310 on the Durango.

Then we looked at a 2006 Honda Civic that was also a gorgeous little car. Only a two door when one of our main objectives was to get a 4 door, but for 40 mpg, it was worth it. So we said. Even when we saw it was a manual transmission and neither of us know how to drive it, we almost got it anyway, saying that my buddy could teach us to drive it. I'm sure I would've been feeling a horrible buyer's remorse once I burned out the clutch! lol.

We saw some other nice cars, like a Hyundai Sonata and a Ford Fusion - but all of them were at the very very peak of our price range, if not past it. All it was was dealers saying "yeah, we can get your payments under 250" and then showing me cars that were upwards of 13,000 dollars.

It took me finding a salesman that had been on the job less than a month to get what we really needed. The Yaris definitely isn't the most attractive on the inside, and it doesn't even have bloopbloop! But, it's four doors, same fuel economy as the Civic, and only has 34,000ish miles. It's smaller than I would have preferred, but I jumped on it for the price. They made me a good deal on the price of the car, and then the finance manager lowered the price of their dealer warranty so I could still keep a low payment but be protected. He said I'm too low ranked and making too little, and he couldn't send me off with one of his cars in good conscience without making sure I'm protected. He took a little loss on that, so to me it's assurance that not all car dealers are selfish cutpurses.

So yeah - it was a good experience for both me and Danielle. We're usually so spontaneous, it was good to slow down and take things a little more carefully. The car we bought before the Durango, and the dog we recently gave away were both indications that we need to slow down more often.