New Car

As many of you know from my Facebook... we bought a new car last week! 

We have known we would need to be upgrading to a family sized car ever since we found out baby #3 was on the way. The Jeep we had just couldn't fit three carseats. Connor is technically almost old enough and tall enough for a booster seat, but the poor kid just isn't anywhere near 40 lbs. And considering the fact that he hasn't gained more than 4 lbs in the last two years of his life, I'm not really holding out much hope that he'll gain 8 lbs by July. SO, we were kinda out of options. 

We were originally going to wait until June-ish to buy the car, but we decided to use the majority of our tax return as a downpayment instead and do it sooner so we wouldn't spend the money on bills and things. We really wanted to make a careful decision this time around on our car choice, since we plan to keep this one... well, for like, ever. Forever. We're not planning on getting another family sized car in a long time, so we wanted to get something we would absolutely love.

We asked for suggestions from friends and family, and finally decided that the price and features of a Dodge Journey were what we wanted. We took ourselves down to Carmax on a saturday and were welcomed by 4 options, all 2014 and with low miles and no issues. We decided to look them over, and favored a blue one. We weren't quite ready to test drive or settle on a final decision yet, so we decided to go home and we would come back and test drive in a couple days. 

The following Monday, Caleb showed me a listing a coworker of his had found for the same car, similar miles, but for about $2000 cheaper. It suddenly dawned on me that we might want to do a bit of online searching to see if that was just a lucky find, or if the Journey we had looked at was just priced high. We have USAA, so we decided to look at their carbuying service and found several options in that lower price range, one in particular was another $700 lower, making it almost $3000 cheaper than the Carmax ones we had viewed. We decided to send an email, asking for more info and to schedule a time to see it. It was nearly 10 pm so we knew we wouldn't hear anything until the following morning. 

The dealership was scheduled to open at 8 am the next morning , and not even 10 minutes past the hour I got a phone call. We scheduled to view the car at 7 pm that night, giving Caleb enough time to get off work and us all to drive into Phoenix. 

When we got there we didn't have to do much looking at the car, since we had view the exact same model on Saturday. We had already seen the cool features and knew we liked what there was to offer. All that was left was to test drive. And test drive, we did! 

Evelynn wasn't thrilled. But Connor sat in the 3rd row where the big boys sit (what I told him to get him to sit in the car) and was so excited. When I asked him if he liked it and if we should buy it he gave a loud and emphatic, "YES! I like it!" 

After both Caleb and I test drove, we decided to go ahead and purchase the car, trading in the Jeep. 

The kids were wonderfully patient through all the paperwork. We figured there's no arguing with $3000 cheaper than the same car we had looked at, plus the fact that we got a lowered interest rate through buying with USAA carbuying services. It was the smarter decision by far and we felt confidant that there wasn't a better option for the car and price we were looking for. 

Like I mentioned, we traded in our Jeep. It ended up being the better option financially, rather than have two car payments and insurance at this point in our lives, especailly since I'm usually always at home. The money we wouldn't spend just didn't seem worth the small amount of time it would actually be driven. 

So, it was bye-bye, Jeep!

Hello, Journey!

 It was pretty late when we got home, so pictures waited until Caleb left for work the next morning. I'm not sure why I didn't take my camera out there for pictures, but atleast I got some nice ones on my phone. 

I can tell you that I'm a fan of the new car. I like the way it drives, I like the space, and I like the fact that the A/C works really, really well. And the kids get their own vents to keep them cool. In the past, our car choices haven't brought the best results on that one. And living in Arizona kinda makes that an important feature. It's also awesome to see that I might be able to get 3 carseats on one bench. There's about twice the space between carseats now as there was in the Jeep. I could probably go on for a few paragraphs about everything I LOVE about it, but I won't. Just know I am QUITE pleased with our purchase