I’m going to adopt a tactic here from many of my fellow PF bloggers and start calling the hubby “Mr. Saver.” It’s just easier. Not that we’re anonymous or anything…
Anyway — Mr. Saver’s lease is up May 6, which means it’s new car time. We didn’t want another lease, since it would be up in another 3 years or so and my car is already 5 1/2 years old (and fully paid for). Thus, we didn’t want to take any chances on having to get two new cars at the same time. But my vehicle is in great shape, and I’m hoping it lasts another five years. So we decided to take advantage of one of the 0% financing offers out there.
I took a look on my day off last Tuesday at the Chevrolet Malibu and the Chevrolet Equinox. The fully loaded Equinox was nice, a 2008 leftover, but Mr. Saver didn’t like the exterior styling. The Malibu was ehhh, I wasn’t impressed with it.
The other vehicle we liked was a Ford Escape. It’s a small SUV that gets decent gas mileage with a four-cylinder engine (20 mpg city/28 highway) and a 170-horsepower engine.
Saturday morning we took a ride to our local Ford dealership and checked out an Escape. All they had on the lot were the fully loaded Limited versions, but the exterior styling is what won over Mr. Saver — he made his decision right then and there. His only caveat was that we get it in black (shocking — NOT).
We sat down with our salesperson and got it for just $400 over invoice and at 0% financing. It’s coming from a dealership in New York, and we should be finalizing everything tomorrow.
It’s not the cheapest car we could have gotten, but we like it. We wanted a small SUV for the cargo space and this model has excellent (5-star) front and side crash ratings from the NHTSA. And we plan to keep it well-maintained so it lasts us as long as possible!
Next is to call my auto insurance company and get Mr. Saver and the new vehicle put on my policy, which should save us money. Before, we were still on two different policies, but now that we’re married, it should be much cheaper together on one.
