How I did it: With our 89 Honda Civic starting to need almost monthly maintenance at the local shop, my wife and I saw the writing on the wall and took the plunge into shopping for a used car.

Lessons & tips: We did a lot of research on how to go about buying a car (as this was
our first time, since the Honda was a wedding gift) and really
benefited from Suzie Orman's Money Book for the Young, Broke and
Fabulous, which has great, practical advice for car shopping. We tried
the car lot route and were definitely turned off by all the sleazy
tricks they try to pull on you in order to manipulate you. We were much
more at ease in dealing with a private party in our town who were
selling a 2003 Subaru Forester because an injury the woman had received
made it too uncomfortable for her to continue driving it.


There were some frustrations had with the process, as the sellers
waffled a bit and we discovered some spendy maintenance that would need
to be done, but in the end we persisted and now are happy with the car
we bought (though we're still paying on the loan we took out to do so -
sigh).

Jul 05, 09:58AM PDT | 0 comments | 1 cheer