Our New Car!

We decided to get a bigger car because Nicole's car seat crowded the passenger's seat REALLY bad (my previous car was a 2009 Toyota Matrix).  With the trips we make to Idaho, we needed a larger car.  We ended up getting a 2014 Toyota Highlander!  I know, getting a brand new car isn't a good idea because the value drops as soon as you drive it away, but in this case it was actually cheaper to buy brand new than to get a used one (plus they made the 2014 model bigger (8 passenger!) so we got more room than we would have in a used one).  Used Highlanders are hard to find, have a very high resale value, and where my Matrix only had 38,000 miles on it, it was hard to find a used one with less mileage.  Also, we got a the most basic Highlander, which are hard to find.  We actually had to get it from New Mexico.  So, it has less fancy features (really...who needs heated, leather seats with kids?), but that made the sticker price about $1000 less than a used one.

We went in on Wednesday to just browse.  We test drove a Highlander and Sienna (minivan) and loved the Highlander, but not the price.  They didn't have any of the basic models, and they don't actually ship those to Utah (or Idaho, Nevada, Colorado, etc.).  They were having a really slow week, so they found a basic one in New Mexico they could trade for.  They needed to meet their quota so they started hacking away at the price, and ended up getting the fleet price on it, which is as cheap as you can get it!  Since Highlanders are so popular, Toyota never does any rebates or special offers on them and we were hoping to save some money with the Costco Auto Program, but since it is so popular, there is no discount for them.  We felt pretty fortunate to get such a deal on it so we went ahead and ordered it (they paid the shipping fees).  What started out as just browsing turned into us actually buying a car!  It arrived late Thursday night and we paid for it and picked it up on Saturday, June 14th (one year after my brother died...talk about major retail therapy).  For the second time in my life I bought a brand new car for less than the price of a 2-3 year old car of the same model.

We love it!  It is so spacious and it is an automatic so Nate likes to drive it.  My Matrix was a stick shift and he didn't like driving it in the city.  It also has so much more power and cool features like a back-up camera (like I said...why pay for all the fancy stuff when the basic model is pretty deluxe to begin with).  We will be able to have lots of adventures with this vehicle and go places we couldn't before.  Not to mention it is AWD with "snow" mode so driving 1000+ miles in the snow to visit my parents should be less stressful.

One last picture with my car.  I didn't cry.  I bawled when I bought her and traded in my Honda Civic.

Our new car!  I named her Blizzard.  I wanted to name her Elsa, but I thought that might be much of a fad thing.