Car Shopping

As I mentioned earlier, one of the first things on the agenda upon our arrival to the state of Washington was acquire some vehicles.  You may remember some of the blog posts about this very issue; if not, you can read them here and here.  

There were several things we thought would be important for the car purchases:

- they had to be within our budget

- one of them needed to be fuel efficient

- has enough storage for us, our dogs, and our future children

- newer with good safety ratings

So, we looked online...a lot. We read Craigslist and Autotrader until our eyeballs bled (okay, not really, but you get my point).  We spent a full day test driving all sorts of cars.  We wheeled and dealed at a car dealership.  We had pre-inspections conducted.

So, what did we end up with?

Meet Julie's new ride: a 2007 Honda CR-V

Yeah, I love it.

And Noa's new ride: a 2007 Honda Civic Hybrid

It's pretty sleek. 

So, how'd we end up with these cars?  Three main reasons:

1: They are Hondas.  We are big Honda fans.  We had a Civic back in Florida and LOVED it.  After reading auto reviews and test driving so many cars, it was an obvious choice for us. 

2: Both were great deals.  Although we still had sticker shock at the prices of cars (especially Hondas) at first, we made out well in the end (see below)

3: In the end, they were what we truly wanted and most importantly they met our criteria (the hybrid is the fuel efficient ride, whereas the CR-V is the "family" car).

And, here are some things we learned along the way:

- If buying from a private seller, get an independent pre-inspection done (we had them done at local Honda dealerships).  This gave us peace of mind and negotiating power.

- Get a Carfax report.  We found out that one of the cars we were interested in at one point had a rebuilt title, meaning the car had been in an accident where it was considered a total loss.  Interesting that the seller didn't mention this to us when we first inquired about the car.  And, no, we did not purchase this car.

- Think long an hard before purchasing a smoker's car.  The one downside to the CR-V is that it was owned by a smoker.  We did get a great deal, but then we had to have the interior detailed and ozone bombed and it still isn't quite to the "normal" smell level yet.  We think it will get better with time, but it's still something we have to work on.

- Go the distance.  In order to acquire the best deals, we had to drive about an hour away and then spend time (and money) to take care of the pre-inspections.  It wasn't convenient, but it saved us money compared to the prices in our immediate area.

EDITED TO ADD: One more word of advice....if possible, pay for your car in full.  That's right - no car loans!  After living in Okinawa for four years without a car payment, we learned how freeing it is not to have that payment weighing on us each month.  So, we saved up and paid for these cars without taking out any kind of loan.