So, the weekend of June 11, I bought a new car. Let me take you first, through a history of my cars.
My first car, my parents bought for me at age 15. At the time, all of the cars in our family were straights and they already weren't looking forward to teaching me to drive much less on a stick. SO, the deal was, they would buy my first car and it had to be under $10,000. Still a pretty sweet deal to me! Keep in mind, I am an only child. I am very lucky :). Granted, our family had a lawn mowing business, so I worked every summer from about 10AM until the sun went down from age 12 to 17 for $2 an hour. So, my parents felt like I deserved it. Anyways, my first car was a 2000 Oldsmobile Alero. It was black, had 2 doors and only had 8,000 miles on it when we bought it with only 1 previous owner. OH! And it had a remote start! Which we didn't even know about until my 3 year old cousin was playing with my keys at a cook out and we heard a car start :P. I mean, how lucky do you have to be to find a deal like that for your first car!? Anyways, here's a picture of it:
Along with 17 year old me. *sigh*
Then, when I finished college at 19 and got my job at VMI, I thought I was making the big bucks and decided, I should get a new car! At this time, the Alero was only 5 years old and only had about 64,000 miles on it. So, this hunka chunka machine was my next vehicle:
A 2006 Honda Ridgeline. Honestly, this is the vehicle I wish I would've kept. It was pretty sweet. It had a trunk!!!!
But, alas, the real world hit. Gas prices started rising. I started getting more monthly bills and at the time I was still part-time. So, I decided, it was time to move on to a smaller vehicle. When I had bought the truck, I was actually in the market for a MINI Cooper. Then, my dad and I test drove a couple automatic transmission MINIs and the transmission felt like it was about to fall out. Trust me people, automatic MINIs sooooo not worth it!!! So, I decided to get back in the market for a MINI and low and behold, the same dealership I had bought my truck from had this little beauty:
It was even orange on the inside
Then I started getting older. And realized, "Wow, this is not a practical car at all." So, I decided I wanted a more practical car. I'm just switching out cars all willy nilly thinking there's no consequence to this. It's just 10s of thousands of dollars. I'm only 21 years old. I've got the rest of my life, what do I care? Then I got my first lesson in a thing called NEGATIVE EQUITY DUN, DUN, DUNNNNN!!!!! This was the first time that I realized what credit actually is. What credit is good, what credit is bad. It was a good lesson to learn. And I'm really glad that I learned it early. So, for the past two years I've been working my butt off on my credit. Making extra payments, getting stuff paid off, etc, etc. and I finally, FINALLY had hardly any negative equity on my car (partly, thanks to the used car market being the way it is right now) and got my credit score up so high I was able to buy my car on my own without a co-signer. Being able to do that after all the hard work I put into it felt AMAZING! It also felt even more amazing walking into a car dealership and actually understanding what they're saying when they were talking about the bottom line price. Which I learned is more of a big deal than your monthly payment. Another hard lesson learned. I am thankful to have learned this lesson early in life instead of years down the road when I get in too deep. And, with all that being said, here is my new car!!!!
A brand spanking new 2012 Hyundai Elantra. Yup, that's right, 2012. Not 2011, 2012. I have never in my life had a brand new car. It has tan interior. Gets over 30 mpg city and close to 40 on the highway and it has built in XM radio!!! I'm so excited. I absolutely love this car and never intend to ever trade it in until it dies (which will hopefully not be for another 20 years!!!). It's everything I've been wanting and more<3. One last picture:
Bubby cruising around with me in the new car in his car seat haha.
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