This is third part of a series. Part one is here and part two is here with interesting side trips here and over at Chronicles today (I'll add the post link later - here it is).
We were heading into town on an errand, talking about moving, and we were going to be driving right by Saturn of Riverdale. We were going to need a new car if we moved so I thought it might be a good idea if we stopped in to have a look. I had no intention of buying a car but I wanted to look to see what they had and just start thinking about it.
We went into town on our errand and then went further north to check to see if Tia's grandpa was at his greenhouse. He wasn't there so we went back to the freeway and came back down to the car dealership. It was the quickest way to get back to the stores that we wanted to get to anyway and once again we would be going past the car dealership.
It was fate. Or heavy traffic and traffic lights if we came back any other way. Fate sounds cooler though.
We parked and started walking around the used cars. Dave came out of the office to help us. Here's a picture of Dave. Say, "Hi Dave!" (Saturn needs a better digital camera.)
Dave came over to help us. Tia asked for Randall and we were told that Randall no longer worked there. He had been fired for letting us take our van home without paying for it last time (just kidding). We didn't ask what Randall was doing now. Life goes on and people move on. We decided to give Dave a try to see how he would do.
I told him what I was looking for. Something inexpensive, reliable, and that would give me fair gas mileage. He showed us a couple of cars but pointed us to the one that he thought fit the description the best. We took it for a test drive and it seemed good enough. It was so inexpensive that I was tempted to just buy it but thought I better think it over. Besides I wanted to go look at the Prius which gets 50 mpg.
We went to a store to get a few things and talked about the car. That's where I came up with my plan from the first post. This car would make that possible. It just had to last long enough for us to get moved or get the other car paid off too. In all reality, it will probably last a few years which is even better.
We came out of the store and went around the corner where the Toyota dealership is. Riverdale is one of those places where there are more car stores than anything else. They had a used Prius on the lot and we went and looked at it. $23,000 and they are ugly. The salesman was nice and said that if I could get past the looks, I'd probably enjoy it. I actually don't care about looks at all. I had just said that it was ugly because it is. It's not a factor for me in purchasing a car. $23,000 was a factor though because it didn't fit into my new devious plan.
The salesman assured me that the payments were more affordable than I probably thought. I'll bet they aren't more affordable than I think but I didn't tell him that. I kept talking to him about price and he kept talking to me about payments. Welcome to America. Land of the low, low, monthly payment. People avoid talking about how much something costs and don't even hint at what something costs when you add the interest on top of the price. It's all about the monthly payment. People will pay thousands of dollars in interest if you'll lower their monthly payment and extend the amount of time they pay on it.
I did tell him that it wasn't whether or not I could afford it. It was whether or not I *wanted* to afford it. My wife and I have good credit and more disposable income than most people that make a similar amount of money. That's what happens when you don't promise all your money away and then pay interest on top of the promise. I thanked him for his time and told my wife to call our lender to get preapproved.
That was the only downfall for Saturn on our first trip there. They ran our credit and sent it out to several lenders that they work with and told us that one was willing to lend us the money at 12% interest. We said no thanks and told them we would find our own loan, which we did at less than 6% interest. We didn't even bother having Saturn check for us this time and went straight to the lender that helped us on the van.
"Has anything changed since the last loan?" she asked.
"We owe less and make more," my wife said.
"Okay, you're approved," the lender said without checking anything. "Tell the dealer to send me the purchase agreement and we'll get the paperwork going."
Tia called Dave and told him that we would take the car and that we would be back after we went to one more store. The rest went pretty smooth but there was one more thing of interest that happened.
Saturn ran our credit anyway. My wife asked why since we weren't going to get funding through them. Dave told us that they use the score as a gauge on how trustworthy the customer is. If we had bad credit, we would have to drive to our lender (an hour to the north) and get a check and bring it back in order to take the car. They had called our lender who verbally told them that we were approved and our credit score was good so they were going to let us take the car and trust that a check would arrive in the mail in a little while.
It's worth it to take care of your credit score. It saved us a couple of hours of travel time on a day that was already going to be long.