The unpopular choice

I so appreciate everyone weighing in on the car situation.  And ultimately.....We are getting the car.

(ducking to avoid the rotten tomatoes)

I know this isn't the popular choice.  In the end, we had to separate our feeling about the car from our feelings about the customer service.  The car is the long term; the rotten service is short term.  Once the car is in our possession, we will have no further dealings with the dealership.

As for the car itself, I know alot of you think we are in over our heads.  And I will agree with you in the short term.  Until the retirement loan is paid off, it is going to be dicey.  Right now the loan is set to be paid off in early February 2012, so about 2.5 months (unless we get some kind of windfall). After that....the money that has been going to the retirement loan will go to the car loan.

Our insurance is not really changing.  We were paying $120 a month....it went down to $111 last month....and it will be going back up to $121.  No real difference there.

Taxes...yes, they will be higher.  We are guessing that the taxes will be close to where the Explorer taxes are.

We did look at under $10k cars on line...and really, there wasn't anything that truly wowed us.  The difference in the monthly loan amount is about $50 more with the car we got vs. some of the others.  And we are getting alot more car.

The difference we have to come up with between the loan amount and final price is about $1100.  We could pay cash for all of it...but we are choosing to put half on the CC.  I just don't want to drain that much cash.  It is a choice we are making. 

There was going to be a car loan one way or another.  Public transportation was not an option due to commute times (both in how long, and the times we need to be where we are going).  Sharing a car....we have managed....but I have been missing work to make that work, plus all the other cancelled appointment.

Someone mentioned selling the boat.  If you read about my "love affair" with the boat....you will know that I am all for selling the boat (which by the way....isn't worth much).  But that is G-man's call...and he will NOT sell the boat.  The boat overall doesn't cost us THAT much, but it does need work (enter the now empty boat maintenance fund)

So there you are.  The unpopular choice.  Just pretend you are happy for me that I am getting a new car.  I know that when I see all the numbers in black and white, I will vomit.  But we are trying to figure out EVERYTHING.