THE BACKGROUND:
A few weeks ago my Xterra started acting up. I was grocery shopping and came out to a car that wouldn't start. For a second I thought I might be out of gas, so a kind gentleman helped me put gas in it and it still wouldn't start (I knew I didn't need gas but it was worth a shot). I called AAA and waited 3 hours for a tow truck. When we got the Xterra to the shop the mechanic was able to start it right up…of course! Well, the mechanic had it for a couple days and found nothing wrong with it except it needed new brakes (which had nothing to do with the problem, but I got them changed). Two days later, my car started doing the exact same thing and it broke down again…called a tow truck and took it back to mechanic. After a few days he finally realized it was the distributor and it was going to cost about $500 to replace…fine do it…no big deal (still less than having a car payment). Once he replaced the distributor he realized that didn't fix the problem and the real problem was the internal gears and I needed a new engine. Hey, at least he was honest with me, didn't charge me a penny, put my old distributor in and sent me on my way.
THE DECISIONS:
Now we are hit with a decision…replace the engine on an 11 year old car with 170K miles on it (that we only had for 2 years) or buy a car…Well, after lots of discussion we decided to start shopping for a new car. We were not excited about this as we haven't had a car payment in a long time, so the idea of paying interest on an item that depreciates was painful. We surveyed our options…pay cash for something that wasn't the favorite car in the world or finance something a little nicer that was reliable. We did the cash thing for the Xterra but we never fully trusted that truck. We never took it on long trips and I shouldn't have been toting my toddler around in something we weren't confident in, but it served its purpose and got us through two years without a car payment.
THE HUNT:
We were on a mad hunt…we had connections with a friend of mine whose brother is the GM of a whole auto mall. All we knew for sure was what we wanted to spend, that we definitely wanted another SUV and that we were in love with the Honda Pilot. We had no idea what we could get with our money but our connection had his people working hard for us. We looked at tons of SUVs and started doing lots of research soon realizing that our cash price was not going to get us what we really wanted. We decided to up our price bracket and were at peace about financing a little bit.
After comparing all of the SUVs on the market, we kept falling back on a brand new Honda Pilot, but there was no way we were going to spend 40K on a car AGAIN (we have done that in the past and it was probably the stupidest thing we could have done). The dealers almost even talked us into a "lease to own" program that Honda offers and two times we almost packed up, went down to the dealer and settled for a lease, but neither of us felt at ease about it. Also, used Honda Pilots are almost impossible to find because people love and keep their Pilots.
HOW GOD WORKS:
It was a Wednesday, we test drove a Nissan Armada, we loved it (even brought it home to see if it would fit in the garage and it did), got back to the dealer and decided to get the credit application started, but Andy had to leave to go work at the fair (which I think was divine intervention) so we couldn't finish the buying process. I went home and of course started second guessing the decision to buy the Armada. I'm from Humboldt, shouldn't I be more caring of the environment? Why would I be driving a massive boat that gets 13 MPG? I started to feel bad thinking that even if I had 4 kids one day (which isn't likely) I would never need that much space. Then I started doing some research and found that the '05 Armada was the WORST rated SUV for that year! Phew, the Lord revealed that to me and I was quickly over the idea of buying that Armada, but then we were back to square one. UGH!!!
I woke up Thursday morning feeling very discouraged because the car shopping process is draining…driving all around southern California looking at different cars, trying to find a sitter, spending every waking moment on the computer searching, being completely off schedule, dealing with car salesmen, feeling guilt for not buying from someone who spent so much time with me etc. I call my Dad and he gave me some really encouraging words. He asked me "what are the desires of your heart?" I told him that I really desired the Honda Pilot and I feel like I would be settling if I got anything else. I also told him that my desire was to not be in bondage to a car for five years and that we didn't want to spend more than a certain amount of money. He then said, "Then make your requests known to God. Tell Him what you want and have faith that he is going to provide it for you." Through this whole process we did do a lot of praying (which is why I think things happened the way they did), but we never made our real requests known to God. Before I even opened up my computer to begin my morning search, Andy and I stopped and prayed…We made our requests known to God and shared the desires of our hearts.
I opened the computer and started my search…the very first vehicle to pop up was this 2008 Honda Pilot with 50K miles on it, it had leather (which was a must for me) and it was under our price range! Just so you know, up until this point I had searched everywhere over the internet for a used Honda Pilot in my area and never found one that met our needs. This is was the first time I had ever seen this listing and I felt overwhelmed that this may be the car that God placed in our path. We decided to go look at it that day, took it for a test drive and bought it.
IT GETS BETTER:
They ran our credit and we find out that we have an extremely high credit score, in fact, the finance manager said he has never in his career seen such a high credit score and "we could buy ten cars today if we wanted." We were planning on financing through our bank because they had a pretty good rate of 3.9% and they offered a 3 year 36,000 mile bumper to bumper comprehensive warranty that beat the dealer's prices by about $700, plus there is no deductible (and the dealer's is $100). When we went into the room to sign our papers the finance man says, "Hey, you guys have amazing credit and our banks would be chomping at the bit to carry your loan. How about I give you a 2.4% interest rate?" We told him that was great and all, but our bank beats their warranty program. He then said. "We'll, match it." We then reminded him that our bank has no deductible and theirs is $100. He said, "We'll match it!" We walked out of the dealer with a car payment that is pretty much the same as our cell phone bill and we will have the car paid off in a couple years! We feel truly blessed and we are so glad the process is over.
LESSONS LEARNED:
#1 It is impossible to get out of a car dealership in less than 5 hours even if you know what you want.
#2 It pays to do your research, sleep on it and don't settle.
#3 Get something that will last at least 10 years because the car buying process sucks and it will probably take me that long to get over the pain!
#4 MAKE YOUR REQUESTS KNOWN TO GOD AND HE WILL GIVE YOU THE DESIRES OF YOUR HEART!
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