The Beauty is Paid For…….

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I was waiting for the day that I could say,

“I no longer have a car payment!”

I counted down the days.  I’ve always paid extra.  In fact I have the Mustang paid off 1 year 8 months early…. Isn’t she a Beauty parked in the garage?

Oh wait, not the car you expected to see there???

Did you actually expect to see this car?

Well there’s a funny story to be had here……

One of my 101 in 1001 list items (number 20 to be exact) stated:
               20. Pay off My Mustang

My January payment I could have paid that baby off or else divide the payment in 2 and paid it off in February.  I decided to do the second option… no reason, that’s just what I chose.

Friday night we took my [step]daughter out for dinner for her birthday (that was the Sunday before… this was our weekend to have her) and on our way home, I really wasn’t feeling “going home” just yet.  So as we passed the Honda dealership I told my husband to swing in.  We drove around the lot and nothing struck our fancy so he was like, can we go back to the Ford dealership.  Of course, why not.  Don’t get me wrong, I love my Mustang, heck I wanted one since I was 12 years old and I made my dream come true in October of 2006, but… I’m getting to the age where luxury is winning out.  It was a great car for just me, but having a daughter and a small backseat doesn’t work so well, but one payment and she was owned free and clear…. decisions decisions.

Well when the Ford Fusion came out (back around 2006) I fell in love, but wanted a Mustang so bad I couldn’t stand myself.  So I always said that if I got a 4 door car someday I either wanted a

Fusion:
or a Nissan Altima.

Then when they redesigned the 2010 Ford Taurus I was sold on them too.

The Ford dealership had some great 2010 Ford Fusions on the lot that had extremely low miles.  So then we decided to head to another town (on the way home) and hit their Ford dealership to see what they had on their lot.  Nothing to impressive even though when I bought my Mustang, I loved dealing with those guys…  So we called it a night and headed home.

Saturday morning when we woke up, the husband and I decided we could put off cleaning house for a bit and run to town to check out the Fusions we saw the night before, but I told him that if we were headed out to do this, we needed to check every dealership in town so we headed to the far end of town to see what was on the Chevy dealer’s lot (nothing that interested us) and as we drove past the Hyundai, Mercedes, Dodge, Chrysler, Jeep dealership we pulled in.  At first the husband was like, really?  What are we going to find there?  I told him I dunno but you never know until you look.

That’s when we saw it, the 2011 Hyundai Sonata.

So we test drove a used 2011.  It had been a leased car that had 8,000 miles on it.  You talk about NICE!  Funny thing was it was red and I said, I don’t want a red car, but I was in love with this car… up until they told us the price for the used car.  It was $1,000 less than New Car price and didn’t come with the special APR financing.

UM…… HELLO….. 
ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?????

We had gone inside to make sure that price was correct.  While we were in there (where it was warmer, it was 19 degrees out Saturday morning) they had a 2011 Hyundai Elantra (the sister car) on the floor.  PC told me to crawl around on this car and check it out.  Being smaller, one of the first things I did was crawl in the backseat.  Come on… I’ve never had a 4 door car, if I’m going to graduate to the “Mom” car, I want a real backseat and not something the size of my Mustang that is 4 doors….

This car knocked my socks off!  I could sit back their comfortably, it had some of the great features that was in the Sonata, it had a Sunroof (which I gave up buying my Mustang, they didn’t come standard).  So we told Steve (our salesman) we wanted to test drive the Elantra.  PC told him which one and before you knew it, we were on the road again.  It was nice having Tbug with us because first of all, she was on her best behavior, but it was also nice for her to know she had leg room now :).

So even though I crossed number 20 off my list today (made the last car payment), I am not out of car payments… oh well this car gets around better on that crappy white stuff that falls out of the sky and the fuel mileage… oh the fuel mileage… My Mustang was getting average of 20 normal every day driving, and out on the open road the best I could do was 25… This car is averaging 30 right now and that’s a lot of in town driving so far.  The sticker estimate is 29 in town and 40 on the hwy… I can’t wait to test that out!!!

So no more walking out in the parking lot here at work and wondering which one is mine…..

 Mine is the one on the right

But I have a feeling I may still walk to the wrong car from time to time 🙂  It’s just the habit after 4 years!

0 thoughts on “The Beauty is Paid For…….

  1. Oh my goodness I love your car!! I HATE car shopping and my husband has been dragging me around looking at new ones lately. You can't get much with no money and the repayments here are huge. HUGE. Does it have that nice new car smell? 🙂

  2. Congrats on your new car! The Challenger is the first new car I've ever had and even though the payment stinks it's nice having something that is super nice AND under warranty! We've had it for 2 1/2 years and it's only got 20,000 miles on it.

  3. Congrats! Hyundais are actually REALLY awesome cars. I did a marketing project on them and (well, I'm pretending you care here) American's perceived value actually makes them cheaper to buy. (I.E. We think they should be cheap, so they sell them cheap. Even thought they are awesome in quality!)

    So congrats on making such a great purchase – you two look good together 😉

  4. We've had 4 Hyandais now: 1 Elantra, 1 Santa Fe, 1 XG 350, and now an Azera. (The latter 2 they don't make any more, alas.) Anyway, we're big believers that they are great cars for the money. I've always had good luck with them. Hyandai replaced the whole engine of my Elantra when it failed. I think you'll be very happy together. (But I do hate car payments…)

  5. My Toyota Matrix will be paid for this year too – so exciting – will we buy a new car right away? Probably not because I would love to have that “car payment” money spent on something else and I mean the car is still in GREAT shape even with high mileage (because we travel to work everyday)…anyways our choice for our next car was the Nissan Sentra (we had a rental one time) but my sister went out and bought one so we scratched that…our next in line was the Hyundai Sonata…we also had a rental one time and I loved it. It was great gas mileage for the travelling we do everyday…bigger tank but it lasted longer. Anyways have fun with the new “mom” car…haha – at least you aren't out buying a “soccer mom” mini van yet! LOL

  6. Very nice! We almost have our pickup paid off… I can't wait! However, we kinda need a 4-door as we now have two kids. But we can't find anything we can afford. 4-door pickups are outrageous! So we're probably gonna have to make do with the super cab awhile longer.

  7. Love the new wheels! I've always dreamed of a Mustang…So awesome that you made your dream come true, enjoyed it, and have now moved on to a new one!!

  8. Anyone who pays their car off early has my hat off to them. And congrats too. I'm a mustanger though, must be in my second childhood except I get to drive and there's no one to sit in the back seat. Now if my fairy godmother would just change our economy car into a mustang . . . ah, well.

  9. She's pretty!!! Congrats!!!

    As for walking up to the wrong car… I we sold my 10-year-old car a year ago. When I was out Christmas shopping someone parked the same year, make, model and color of my old car… I walked up and pushed the button to unlock the hatch (like my current car… old car didn't have that feature – you had to use remote to unlock)… I was confused and then EMBARRASSED… IT WASN'T MY CAR! 😉

    Stef at TooMuchToDoSoLittleTime.com

  10. Congrats! SUCH a huge accomplishment and I bet it feels amazing to get it off of your shoulders. I still have a little less than 2 years left on mine, and I'm hoping to get it paid off a little early too. Maybe you'll be my inspiration 🙂

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