One Woman's
Perspective
Last
Week's Column
"I felt that leasing was throwing your money away, comparable to renting a home instead of buying." |
Adventures In Car Buying
Part 2
by Kira Sampson
o....my
mom’s car died
. My husband Kevin
did not take this death well. In fact, he refused to
accept that the car was beyond help until my mom took it
to a mechanic and he told Kevin it would take about $1300
just for starters — and that wouldn’t take care
of the heating and air conditioning problems. I am proud
to report that I refrained from saying, "I told you
so."
Then began the debate: what to do. We had an
8-year-old Taurus which was still in excellent condition,
and I wanted to give this to my mom to make up for the
four years of uncertainty with the car we had chosen for
her. But our precarious finances were finally getting to
the point where we could see the l
ight at
the end of the tunnel (yeah, I know — too bad it
turned out to be a train) and Kevin wasn’t prepared
to take on another car note right now. He wanted to lease
a car, either for us or for my mom. I felt that leasing
was throwing your money away, comparable to renting a
home instead of buying.
Well, you can imagine the fun times that followed.
KIRA’S
CAR BUYING RULE NUMBER 4:
(For rules 1-3, please see my previous
article)
Never, ever argue with your mate about money.
Go to separate corners, beat the stuffing out of a pillow, do whatever is necessary...just don’t argue. You won’t get anywhere, and the added stress does nasty things to your body.
One week and a bucket 
of tears
later....we leased a car and gave my mother the Taurus.
Now, that was what we both wanted to do in the first
place — why did it take a week of arguing and
anguish to get there? Sometimes this marriage thing just
drives me crazy. But if I’ve learned one thing from
this experience, it’s this:
KIRA’S CAR BUYING RULE NUMBER 5:
NEVER, EVER buy a used car without having a mechanic check it over thoroughly — top to bottom, inside and out, one end to the other.
Even if it costs you a couple of hundred bucks, IT’S WORTH IT.
Note: One Woman’s Perspective will be going on hiatus for a while. It may pop up at irregular intervals, whenever I feels I have something to say. Notice I didn’t say something important to say....
Kira Sampson is a writer, homeschool mother, news editor, and editor/publisher of two newsletters, one for her local homeschool group and the other for a local writer's group.
She is also one of the Founders of VegSource. Her column, One Woman's Perspective, is an occasional feature of VegSource On-Line Magazine.