Goodbye Reba Nell.

It's been an interesting few days.

My dad and I went car shopping on Thursday. I didn't really know if there would be any actual "shopping" but we went around to look at cars. As you know, I'd been having quite a bit of trouble with mine within the last two months and I was just basically fed up with havings a shitty car. I'd been checking out websites all week trying to get a car in mind. I looked at a lot of Toyota Corollas considering they get great gas mileage and are fairly compact. Whenever we set out on Thursday, I had already gotten a Corolla in my head. Even had the color picked out. We went to a Ford dealership first because my dad can get a discount on Fords through work. The lot we went to only had three Focuses, one of which was automatic. I drove it, after practically getting attacked on the car lot by the salesman, and I wasn't very happy with the visibility nor the feel of the car. The second dealership we went to had a tons of Corollas but they didn't have the color I wanted. This time we didn't get attacked by a salesman and actually had to go inside to find one. I ended up test driving a red 2010 and was incredibly pleased with the performance of the vehicle. Fortunately, inside the showroom, they had the color I wanted and it just happened to have the exact same features as the car I tested.

The deciding factor about any deal was going to be my current car, and I knew that. I owed over twice what that car was worth, and me being able to get another car depended on whether or not they were willing to pay off my trade. The Toyota dealership was willing to pay off my trade, but there was a catch: it would be added to the selling price of the vehicle. This was something I expected to happen even though, now that I am technically in the auto financing business, I know that car dealerships receive rebates on new cars that they sell and that those rebates would have been enough to eat up the negative equity on my vehicle. But, who is going to be willing to lose a couple thousand dollars just to make a sale? Not a lot of places. We finagled over a monthly payment for quite some time, a sale being completely dependent on whether or not I could fit a new car into my budget. I even asked if they had some slightly used Corollas that I might be able to look at. The salesman told me that the interest would be higher on an older model (which is true) and that my monthly payment would be about the same because of that (not necessarily true). Regardless, I won't say that I felt pressured, but I did feel that the salesman wasn't being very direct. For example, I asked him what my interest rate would be (at least twice) and he never gave me a percentage, just said that I was getting their "great low rate." I gave him a price range and it turns out that my price range was stretched a little but I crunched the numbers and I think I can make this work. After all, I am making more money now, and I've only been low on money due to the concerts and things I've done over the past few months. Not to mention the trip to Chicago and replacing a fuel pump in the same weekend.

So, anyway, to sum up an ordeal that lasted a total of almost five hours, I drove home a 2010 Toyota Corolla in blue streak metallic with 15 miles on the speedometer. And I love it. Now I just have to decide what I'm going to name her.