1 post tagged “car”

Yesterday I went to the dealership where I'd bought my last car (back around the turn of the century), for the specific purpose of test-driving two specific models, leaving the lot, and going to a couple other dealerships around town to test-drive some more.  Just data-gathering.  I brought my dad along and said I'd treat him to lunch, with the thought that if I got caught up too long at one dealership, I'd have him around to remind me that we had lunch plans and "oh yeah, gotta run".  Well, we both got seriously wowed by the new models the first sales guy showed us, forgot about lunch, and I ended up staying into the evening to sign papers for a 2009 Honda Civic LX-S.  Which is overall going to be a good thing, 'cause I desperately could use a new car.  I was so buzzed last night.  I woke up this morning, however, and I've got a wee bit of buyer's remorse already.  Haha.  See, I walked onto the lot yesterday with no checkbook and totally otherwise unprepared, since I had planned to not purchase anything.  Repeatedly, I explained this to the sales guy.  He said "we can just work around some rough estimates and see how comfortable you are with the numbers" and that made sense to me.  The numbers he quoted did seem workable to me, given the estimates my dad and I were pulling out of the tops of our heads; and only now, this morning, do I recognize that the sales guy pooh-poohed each of our musings that maybe we should call home or run home real quick to confirm how close our estimates were.   As it turns out, I did overestimate my annual salary by a significant amount.  Rats.  This is primarily what's fueling my remorse.   But I believe this is still going to be workable.  I can afford this car.  I simply have to tighten my belt somewhat more than I had planned.  The entry in my budget for "play money" is going to be renamed "car payment", and I believe I can otherwise still live comfortably.  I just wish my "get off the lot after test driving" contingency plans had worked, so that the dealerships and I could have made better-informed decisions.  Who knows; perhaps I could have ended up with a payment schedule that would have left more comfortable wiggle room in my pocketbook.  Well, I am very relieved that even though my estimates were too high, I can at least still afford this happy shiny awesome car.  :D  Highest safety ratings, great handling, best trade-in value, and so on.  It has a few other key features that I like a lot.  And it'll help the corporate image of the company I work for, to have it in the parking lot each day, in place of my much-adored, but peeling, leaking and dented, old car.  Kinda can't wait to see the impression it'll make on the guys at the office Monday morning, because everyone's been saying I've been long overdue in getting a nice car for myself.  Maybe they were right.  *bounce*