New Car

Well, the inevitable finally happened. My 1994 Honda Prelude kicked the dust! Luckily, it didn't leave me stranded anywhere. It was sitting for a few days at our house while I was traveling for work. When I came home and tried to start it...it wouldn't catch. Doug and I both knew this day would happen eventually so rather than invest more money into it and wait to see what was wrong, we decided to take out a loan and go shopping. I have decided that I officially HATE car shopping! :( I think it may be the ONLY type of shopping that I hate. I feel so stressed and under pressure and I have this sickening feeling that I am constantly getting ripped off or lied to. Maybe it's all of the stereotypes of the sleazy car salesmen? I don't know. I just know I don't like it! We started out on Saturday at 10:00 am and headed over to the bank to sign the paperwork for my pre-approval. We knew that we did not want to lease because we would like to eventually pay off a loan and not have a car payment. We also knew the chances of us being able to afford to buy a brand new car were slim. So, off to the used car dealerships it was. We started out at Carsense and had a bad experience with a really crappy salesman. We only stayed for about 10 minutes. Friends of ours have a Nissan and swear by it. I've heard other people also say great things about them so we figured we would check out the Nissan dealership. The salesman that we dealt with here was great! So personable and not pushy at all. He showed us several different cars and let us test drive a bunch. Long story short, we ended up falling in love with a 2005 Nissan Maxima. The safety ratings on this car are the best and that was important to us since we will most likely still have this car when we have kids.

So, details. The outside is a dark blue (almost black if it is not in direct sunlight) and the inside is black leather. My favorite feature is that it has heated seats AND a heated steering wheel! I am not so good with the cold and with not having a garage anymore, this will make the weather a bit more tolerable.

It's so much fun to drive around a nice car. And, going from an ancient little Honda coupe (that had lost it's AC and radio functions years ago) to a roomy sedan with leather is great! It's amazing the little things that you take for granted and don't appreciate until they are gone.