six cars

Way back in 2011, Jer and I were dating, I was driving a Ford Ranger, and he a very old Honda Accord. We both lived in Lexington and my truck was used to drive to work and to hang out with Jer. And once we took it to a drive-in movie.

Jeremy moved to Los Angeles in and when that move came to be a reality in my life, I determined that driving across the country and living in a large city was not fit for my trusty truck. (Jer’s Honda didn’t make the move either.)

It was my first foray in to car shopping- my parents had generously given me my first two (a GMC Sonoma before the Ranger). With advice coming from ALL directions, I set my sights on a brand new dealership hatchback, and it ultimately came down to a 2012 Honda Fit or a 2011 Ford Fiesta.

A lime green Fiesta ultimately made the cut- car number one of six in me and Jer's six years of marriage, and the reason, perhaps (or most definitely), for all of the car shuffling we’ve done over these years. Should have gone with the Honda.

Her name was Gemma

We held on to that Fiesta for a while actually. It officially became *our* car in 2013 when we got married. And then it wasn’t until 2015 when we started noticing issues with it. Like the time we were stuck in traffic on the 405 and it stalled out. Or how it occasionally decided to not accelerate when we asked it to. And then doing some reading on it led me to realize that though the model had been in Europe for a while, the transmission in our car was brand new to the USA for its model year. And everyone with the car was beginning to have transmission problems. Great. 

We started looking around for a more reliable car, as we didn’t want the issues to pile up and render our car un-driveable, and we test drove a brand new Honda Fit (again!) After a failed attempt at lowering the price, we went home with the Fiesta and navigated through our next steps.

Cue: our Credit Union’s car buying program. They had someone on staff specifically to purchase cars for the Credit Union members, provided the car was purchased with their financing. Win-win, yeah?! No haggling, no searching, no effort aside from telling them what we wanted, just some waiting. We gave them a budget and decided we wanted a Honda Accord, and then the waiting began. Two months later we sold the Fiesta to a Ford dealership, took a Lyft to our Credit Union, signed some paperwork, and drove off with our new-to-us 2012 Honda Accord. It had heated seats and I was happy.

Let it also be known in this timeline that I was knowingly pregnant with Harrison in the last few weeks that we had the Fiesta, so he has technically been in all six of our cars.

So that was sometime in September of 2015. My full-time job had unexpectedly ended a week or so before we got the news the Accord had been found, and being pregnant meant I didn’t want to search for any long-term commitment to replace that job. I worked very part-time during my entire pregnancy with Harrison, and stopped working completely around 37 weeks. 

This part-time/no work was not because we could afford to live that way. Our budget was in the red every month after Harrison’s birth for quite some time. (Hello student loans and hello car loan and hello Los Angeles rent prices and all that.) Towards the end of that year (2016) we were out of ideas for how to sustain ourselves and decided to join a Financial Peace University course that some friends from our church were facilitating.

Admittedly, I was skeptical. I had heard of Dave Ramsey/Financial Peace University and knew that people had good results but my skepticism came from already having a good handle on money, no credit card debt, no extravagant purchases, and literally only spending money on what we needed. So how could spending $100 (that we didn’t have) on this course really help our situation? We really just needed another income.

Well, Dave Ramsey wasn’t necessarily life-changing in a big bold exciting way, but we learned some very beneficial information, and at the end of it all, Jer and I came to the decision that we needed to get rid of the Accord and purchase a cheap car with cash- to get rid of our monthly car payment and to lower our insurance rate.

So that’s what we did. In late January 2017 I scoured Craigslist for weeks and found a 2001 Toyota Corolla that we test drove, got a pre-purchase inspection on, and bought with cash. We had some equity on the Accord and it all worked out. Then the brakes went out when someone cut Jer off on the highway, resulting in a fender-bender, but even with all the truthful information it was determined to be the other driver’s fault and we were cut a check for the damages to our car (scrapes and scratches that blended in with the older scrapes and scratches!) So we ... made some money? Except the brakes needed fixed and then other things needed fixed and then 16 months down the road Jeremy had strong feelings about the safety of the car and we were making a little bit more money (yay full-time nannying with Harrison in tow!) and we said sorry Dave Ramsey and purchased a car that required a car payment. At that point we knew we had baby #2 on the way and a beater just wasn’t cutting it for a family car.

Good bye old Corolla

Enter our 2010 Ford Fusion, purchased in June 2018. Sporty silver exterior, heated leather seats, a back-up camera, and a V6 engine that proved to me driving could be for fun and not just for function. We got terrible gas mileage but we felt safe in it and truly enjoyed that car. After the Fiesta fiasco I hadn't anticipated purposely seeking out a Ford again (unless it was a truck), but the Fusions had great ratings, and our Credit Union car guy, while he wasn’t directly involved this time around, did give me some advice on a car that would last, in our price range, and the Fusion was one of them.

Hello new Fusion

Six months later, a week or so before Dylan was born, we put his car seat in the Fusion with Harrison’s help, and with that came some lovely moments of excitement and reflection and joy for the times to come. Visions of Harrison and our new baby in the backseat of the car, together.

Happy anticipation for baby #2

And then just about two weeks after Dylan’s birth, and before he had even been in the car (yay, homebirth!), the Fusion was totaled. Jer and Harrison were in the car and there were two other cars involved and thankfully no one was hurt. And the Fusion was towed away that day, never to be driven again.

We didn’t know right away if it was totaled or not, that news took a (very frustrating) week. Once we got the news we didn’t know what to do with it. Should we start looking for a new car right away? Should we wait on more information from our car insurance? (Our car insurance coverage, by the way, was UP TO SNUFF thanks to what we learned from Dave Ramsey. So thankful.)

We ended up going two months without a car. Two months of grocery shopping and baby appointments and two emergency room visits with Dylan, all while learning how to be a family of four. I don’t recommend it, though if you need to deal with something like that, it’s great to have a community of people around you who are willing to help. And we CERTAINLY did. I am forever grateful to all the friends who lent us cars and gave us rides and brought us necessities.

In the midst of those two months we actually went to Carmax and purchased a car. A Honda Fit! (Really! The third one in our car history!) And we owned that car for ... six days... and it didn’t feel right from day one. Carmax has a seven-day return policy, and I can now vouch for how no-hassle that return policy is. Almost immediately after we decided the Honda was not right for us (car number 4.5?), we received two generous gifts in quick succession that lead to us getting a 2006 Volvo sedan in early March.

number 4.5

I praised that Volvo up and down and all around. It was gifted to us and we couldn’t have been more thankful. We got a pre-purchase inspection on it, got new tires and a new timing belt, took care of other miscellany, and kept a running list of a few other repairs down the pipeline. No car payment + a generous financial gift + some savings = we could repair this car and keep it forever.

It was supposed to be forever ...

Well, forever lasted about four months. Volvos are one of the safest cars on the market, but the repairs this one needed kept getting put off, for no externalized reasons. Jer and I just independently couldn’t figure out the benefit of putting more money into a 2006 car with 120k miles, particularly as the repairs list kept getting added to, so neither one of us pushed to get the work done.

Jer ended up externalizing the thought that maybe the money could be better spent, and I realized I was on the same page. So in early July we hesitantly had the Volvo appraised at Carmax; simply to see what we could get for it, and evaluate our options from there. We had every intention of keeping it for at least another week, or for a lot longer.

Interestingly enough, while Carmax was doing their appraisal inspection, they apparently forgot to latch the hood properly before taking it for a drive. And so while they were driving it, the hood flipped up and the mounts on either side got so bent out of shape the hood could no longer be latched back down. And so immediately our car was rendered un-drivable. Of course this would happen to us. Thanks, Carmax! They ended up offering us more than we anticipated for the car, and refunded us for a three day rental car, so we took their check and left that day with no car to our name. That was not the plan in any way, but goodbye car #5!

It was very evident that even as a single-income family, getting a new car that was reliable enough and safe enough for the four of us meant financing. (Sorry Dave Ramsey.) So we dug deep and went car shopping for the next three days. Stressful, frustrating, annoying. But we did it and on the third day we found the car that was meant to be. We test drove a Honda Fit! For the fourth time in our car saga! And we didn’t get it! Again! Instead, our new to us car is a 2015 Toyota Corolla. Nothing flashy, though it does have the convenience of keyless entry and a backup camera. It’s little things like that that we don’t need but greatly benefit from. We feel safe, we are assured through the brand and through the certified pre-own program that we probably don’t have a lemon, and we are hopeful that this is finally the car we hold on to and will see Harrison learning to drive in 13 years from now.

Actual forever?

— — — 

Now ... if we went back to 2011 when I made the decision to buy the lime green Fiesta instead of the Honda Fit, and went home with the Fit ... where would we be today?? Hah. I guess it’s clear enough at this point it’s not the car for us. And if it could have been ... we’ll never know.