September 6, 2013

Crazy Day! Fun Day!

So, Steve and I had a crazy Saturday a few weekends ago.  I've had my Acura for 6 years now, and it really has been a great car.  Probably my favorite car to own so far. Steve on the other hand did not like that car.  It drove him nuts that we had to put Premium Gas into it and then it only averaged 25 miles per gallon.  For just a little 4 cylinder it wasn't the greatest gas mileage, but I didn't buy it to save gas, I bought it because it really was fun to drive. And gas prices weren't as high as they are now.

So for 6 years I've been putting my foot down every time he tried to sell it.  :)  Then the other day I was looking at the value on Kelly Blue Book and noticed it had dropped about $5,000 since I had last looked.  It had held it's value pretty well up until this point.  It probably took a dip because it was at 63,000 miles, up over that 60,000 mile point.  With that, and the money I was spending on gas and knowing it drove Steve nuts, I got to thinking.  If I ever wanted to get another new car, now may be a good time to do it.  It has been paid off for years, so I would be able to trade it in and not have to have a huge loan on a new car.  So I decided to see what Steve thought.

It took no twisting of any arm to get him to jump on board so we started looking.  It took a few weeks, but we settled on either the Accord or the Camry.  I liked the Accord a little better then the Camry.  It felt like I was in my Acura only it was bigger and better gas mileage.  But, I also really liked the Camry.  They hold their value better and it's a fun car to drive, and they've really classed it up and given it some nice details.

We headed into the Honda Dealership on a Saturday morning to crunch some numbers.  They ended up giving me below invoice for the Accord and they gave me private party value for my Acura!  This is one reason why I'm so picky with my car people!  That thing still looked great and they were willing to bend over backwards to give me a great price to get it.

When we told them it was a deal, the salesman walked away and I looked at Steve and said "Well they gave us such a great deal, you should get one too."  Steve thought that was a great idea!  So, we asked them what they'd give us for his Highlander.  It wasn't to far off what we would have hoped to get.

We went for lunch to talk about it, and decided to get Steve the Camry.  We didn't need an SUV anymore because we have nothing to pull and honestly we've only used the third row seat once in the year and a half we owned it.  The Camry would give us better gas mileage.  Probably if it hadn't had black interior and a dark red exterior Steve would have kept it, but those two things drove him nuts.

So we headed to Toyota to crunch some numbers.  Sure enough they gave us invoice and a fair trade in price for his Highlander.  And, the Camry wasn't much more then what the Highlander was worth.

We started out at 8am and headed home at 8:30pm.  We were exhausted, but when can you say you bought two new cars in one day?






My car is the white Honda Accord, Steve's car is the Silver Camry

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