August 7, 2008

The Vehicular Mobile Dilemma

I don't like cars, nope, not one teeny tiny bit. They are a waste of money in my opinion and if America wasn't set up in such a way that you practically need to own one unless you're living in a very large city with awesome public transportation, I wouldn't.

Don't get me wrong, there are definitely things about them that are convenient. But, in most cases, they're just money pits.

We own a Jeep Liberty and have had it for just a little over 2 years. We've had terribly luck with cars in our 4 years of marriage and this is our 3rd main vehicle that we've own. We recently scaled back to one vehicle and I love it. I love that we are not only saving ourselves one car payment a month, we're also not having to pay for insurance and car repairs on it. Sometimes it's not always convenient, but we make it work. Kyle owns a moped that he rides to and from work when the weather is nice. That was cheap to buy, is cheap to maintain and gets like 40 miles to the gallon.

Okay, so here's the dilemma. We're having a second child in March and we only own a 5 passenger vehicle. So, once the baby comes, if we have 2 people fly in to visit us, we can't carry everybody in one vehicle. I just don't feel like "resetting" our car payment right now and we can't afford anything in cash that would reliable enough for us. I'm all about owning "newer" vehicles to alleviate a lot of unnecessary car repairs. Our Jeep is 2003, so it's 5 years old, so if we bought and sold, I'd want to buy something more like a 2005. But, that puts any type of 7 passenger van at around $12-14k on the low end for a decent brand.

Our Jeep will be paid for in 2 years, if not sooner if we decide to pay it off with some of our savings. It's hard to live without car payments, but I don't want to have car payments any more.

Ugh...I'm just ranting. I don't know what we should do. It's always such pain to deal with cars and I HATE dealerships. HATE HATE HATE HATE them! So, I really don't want to go there, which means everything would have to be independent. We'd have to sell our Jeep independently and then we'd have to find an independent buyer and sometimes that can be scary.

I don't know what to do.

4 comments:

Shelley said...

what about having the people who come visit you rent their own car. Or split the cost with them? It's not that expensive to rent one for a week especially since they won't be paying for a hotel. It doesn't make sense to up your monthly just for the occasional out of town visitor. But that's just what makes sense to me. If you want a bigger car for other reasons as well, then that wouldn't be a good options

I hate cars, too! I wish public transportation was way more prevalent.

Nicole said...

I agree with Shelley. I'm sure people wouldn't mind renting a car. And if Tyler and I come, we'll always have our car :-) So you don't have to worry bout us.
And yes, I wish that I worked downtown cuz I would probably never drive, I would just ride my bike EVERYWHERE! I actually could ride my bike to work, it only takes about 30 or 45 minutes to get there, which doesn't bother me, but being a nanny, I kinda need my car to transport my little guy around. Oh well. :-)

Anonymous said...

I was just going to write to have them rent a car. It's cheaper than a car payment. My parents used to have a 7 passenger car for when "we all came to visit." We "all" only sat in it twice.

Lovetts said...

I was in the same boat when we learned Grant was coming. I love my 2005 Dodge Grand Caravan! It's seven passenger but the seats fold down so right now it only seats 4 and tons of groceries and stuff. Check out craigslist. you can find good deals there and sell your car super fast!