Oh No, I'm a Mini Van Mom!

A few weeks ago, the day after Thanksgiving to be exact, the Knight and I bought a Mini-Van.

We have been a one car family for a while now. The car we were driving was a 1996 Dodge Intrepid. It ran well for a while, but then things started to go wrong. Like the tires always ran flat. Or the brakes would constantly need to be replaced. The engine light would always be on. And both the air conditioner and the heater were broken, although we could finagle the heater on using a pair of pliers.

The final straw came when the car started to vibrate wildly once we went above 45 m.p.h. At first the vibration was slight and hardly noticeable, but then it became so bad that the Mermaid would hang on for dear life and yell "Whoa! Whoa!" for the entire length of the car ride. We took the car to the mechanic and he informed us that the vibration was the actual engine vibrating against the car itself, because the engine mounts were so rusted through and old that they weren't holding the engine in place correctly any more. In fact, he told us that the engine could fall out of the car any minute.

Nice.

So, the day after Thanksgiving we dropped the girls off with my In Law's and we vowed not to return until we have a safe car to return in. Now, because we are big fans of Dave Ramsey and we are in fact on his Total Money Makeover Plan, we knew that we did not want to finance a car. For one, we can't afford a car payment right now and two, we just worked our butts off to get rid of my old car payment and we didn't want to sign up for another one after all that work. So we made some phone calls. Turns out, my ex-step-uncle (follow that?;o)) is a mechanic. A reliable mechanic. A reliable mechanic who has a mini van for sale.
We went to go see him and the van and ended up buying the van.

It's a 1996 Dodge Caravan. There is a little bit of rust on the bottom of both sliding doors. One sliding door refuses to lock. There's no CD player, only a cassette. When you open the glove compartment, you find out that it is actually not attached to the rest of the dashboard and it falls to the ground. And it has over 130,000 miles on it.

But you know what? It runs like a dream, I kid you not. This is where the whole "buying from a family member who is also a reliable mechanic" plan really pays off. Because not only did he knock down the already low low price for us since we are family, but he also had the inside detailed and put brand new tires on it. Plus, the brakes are new. Plus, he maintained it extremely well.

So, now we have a very safe and reliable van. And I LOVE it. I love the room, I love the comfort, and I love the safety features. And I love the fact that we got what we set out to get, and we still have no car payment.

One step closer to being debt free, baby.

Oh No, I'm a Mini Van Mom!