New SUV!

My husband and I tend to both research things to death, especially when a lot of money is involved. We have worked very hard to be basically debt free except for our houses and we love to eat out and take vacations. However, when we moved back to the States we needed another vehicle. My husband 's parents have graciously let us borrow one of their cars until we bought a house and bought a car. Thank you Mom and Dad! But the time has come to make a decision and return theirs.

Here's how the process went:

We considered a larger SUV or minivan or getting a super gas efficient car mainly for my husband. However, after having my third miscarriage, I don't have as much hope for having the large family I always thought I would. So given that, I didn't want to drive a huge gas guzzler around with only having one child. Although having a third row would be nice it was not necessary. A must was rear air conditioning and we decided that with hot Texas summers, getting the vehicle with rear a/c was a good move. We looked at the Acura MDX's. We loved them! Sadly, new they cost 50K. Yeah, that was way out of our budget! We looked at about 6 used ones, all ran good but had a lot of miles on them. We drive about 10K miles per year per vehicle. So buying a six year old car with over 100K miles wasn't appealing. We wanted to pay cash for something but around the 8K mark our choices were limited. As we moved up in price the vehicle choices increased. However, we just couldn't justify paying 16K for a vehicle with 120K miles on it (a fully loaded 2006 MDX). So we decided to buy new since we haven't had a car payment in two years (when we bought our new Subaru we paid it off in 2 years) and we paid cash for my husband 's car in Germany and sold it for $300 less than we paid for it 3 years before.

I contacted probably 20 car dealers comparing deals. Finally, Sunday night, I saw an internet special ad for a new 2012 Ford Edge and 2013 Explorer. I emailed Sunday night and followed up Monday morning. The Explorer had been sold but the Edge was still there. He said but they only had one at that price. I played tough girl and told them I was driving across town and if it sold to call me asap because I didn't want to waste my time driving there if that vehicle for that price was not available. Dealers have played that game with me too many times and I've walked away angry. Needless to say, he put the keys on his desk and when I got there only one other family had driven it that morning. I drove it and then bought it. The dealer said we got such a good deal on it and our credit is so good they could have written us a check. We got over $5500 off MSRP and $2299 below Consumer Reports bottom line. It would have been $750 more off but I didn't have a trade-in. I knew it was an awesome deal when I saw the ad.  The internet sales guy said they have specials about once a month where they lose money to draw people in. He said his dealership literally lost money on this deal.  However, only people with really good credit get the truly good deal because dealers will make it up with long drawn on, high interest payments. We loath car payments but decided at this time it's worth doing considering the poor used car market and having excellent credit we got the best interest rate possible. It was strange buying a car alone but I like playing hard ball. The dealers even let me drive it off the lot before my husband could get off work to sign off on his part of the deal.

Here's our new beauty! It's dark blue with tan interior. I love the peppiness of the Edge over larger SUVs such as the Explorer. Although the Explorers are very nice too!  I also love the entertainment system and being able to drive hands-free.  Thank you, husband, for my new ride!!