Out with the old

It was an exciting and monumental weekend for The Thompson family. We bought a new car! We have been debating over a new car for months now. I mean like close to a year. The hubs and I are huge planners and very sensible spenders. We hardly buy ourselves anything. We just have no room in our budget for any extras. We’re trying to plan so that in another year to two years I can stay home and raise our family.

Our car situation has really sucked for awhile now. My car which I’ve had since I was sixteen thank you very much has been overheating since the beginning of summer. This has limited its use to grocery store trips and local errands only. When we returned from vacationing over the Thanksgiving holiday the battery had died. We decided to do nothing about it while we continued to figure out a way to afford a new car.

The hubs car on the other hand has been running like a champ! He got it brand new in 2006 and has had no major repairs. The only two major problems with his car (and these are only problems to me not him) is it’s a two door and a manual. That makes it not very car seat friendly and I can’t drive a stick. I know what some of you are saying “Just learn to drive a stick Julie.” Well I have this little thing called anxiety and sometimes it’s hard enough just to drive an automatic. I think I’m a very good driver but I have a fear of driving. I think this fear developed as my car got older than dirt and I stopped feeling safe. All this being said we’ve put a lot of miles on his car and needed something to split the load before we have two dead cars.

Well the day finally came and on Saturday March 5^th 2011 we dropped Joanna off with a sitter and purchased our first new car together. I was beyond excited about the car and was even more excited at how much my credit score had improved since we bought the house. I ventured into the credit world way to young and have spent the last 5-8 years trying to repair it and boy was it a success! I’m so grateful and thankful that we’ve been giving the opportunity for our family to have a safe new car.