And Now For The Drumroll. . .

Good news - We picked out a new vehicle to buy this week! In my last post I gave 6 recommendations we'd received for good family cars. After realizing that my car has 3-4 years left until it's where Joe's was when it died last week, we decided to get an SUV-style in place of Joe's car and then in a few years trade my car in for a minivan. (So therefore we crossed off the Volvo SUV and Chevy Traverse since they are similar.) Until then, we should have plenty of room (since we only have one kid now and only plan to have two total in the future) - especially after what we've been used to with Joe's 2-door 1997 white Grand Am and my 4 door 2001 red Ford Focus!

We had spent last week researching vehicles and dealerships online and then on Saturday went to a dozen dealerships in the freezing cold which wasn't fun, but since January is one of the slowest times for car sales (due to that reason) there were a lot of great deals. For example, we hadn't planned on getting a brand new car but with incentives like $5000 rebates, free gifts, and free oil changes we were offered several new vehicles for the same price as used vehicles.

It was interesting to see how different each place/person dealt with us. Some were laid back and not pushy at all while others were annoying by how they wouldn't let us leave! I definitely preferred the not pushy salespeople, however like with anything it all came down to which place has the exact purchase we want. The best deal was the Kia Sorento, but we knew when we got into the Hyundai Santa Fe that it was "the one." Ironically, Hyundai was the dealership with the pushiest people but they had a brand new, nice looking black, SE model that had great leg room, great storage, and best of all is great quality and safe. It was only $5K more than the Sorento but way cheaper than the Honda Pilot and was voted the #1 vehicle in 2008 by Consumer Report and #2 in 2009. So Logan is going to Babysitter's today (Tuesday) while Joe and I go buy it. Yeay - it was worth the wait!