Perhaps my least favorite type of shopping in the world is car shopping. Especially used car shopping. It's so complicated. Or do I make it unnecessarily complicated? If it were up to me, I wouldn't own a car. I'd go back to horse and buggy days or vastly improve public transportation to make it easy and affordable everywhere - not just in big cities.
Part of the problem is that used cars have doubled in price in the last 10 years. Ten years ago, you could get a decent used car under $10,000. Then Covid hit, and the price of decent used cars skyrocketed. I thought used car prices might come down now that the covid shortages have ended, but you can no longer buy a new car under $20K, and most used cars are upwards of $15K. $10 thousand dollars will only buy you a 15 year old 150000 mile clunker. Which could be fine, but we're buying a car for our daughter because she is getting a full ride scholarship next year, and well, we can spend more to buy a more reliable vehicle.
We couldn't do this for our other kids, although we helped some out with college cars - I think our oldest's first car was about $3000, and he paid for part of it. It only lasted 3 or 4 years, but that was long enough. Then our next two kids didn't need cars because they live in Boston. But our oldest daughter inherited our old car when she finished college in 3 years and moved out on her own in San Diego. She was looking to buy in 2022, when it was cheaper to buy a new car than a newer used car. That's when we decided we might as well buy a new car for me and give her our old car, which is still running at 13 years old and 150,000+ miles.
I like my little Subaru Impreza - it is a base base model, but Subaru base models include a number of extra features.. I wish we had held out for the Crosstrek, but the dealer had none on the lot, we needed a car, and my husband didn't want to wait weeks. At the time, I just wanted something to get me around town efficiently and effectively and safely for a good price. I was more interested in efficiency than style. And this little car has been reliable and fairly efficient - although not as great as a hybrid. I would be happy to give her my car and buy myself a new car, but will hold off on new for a little longer.
Now we're looking at 3 cars for her - a Kia Seltos, a Volkswagen Taos, and a Chevy Trax, all of which will get you from place to place just fine, but each has pluses and minuses. She wanted an old Audi but the need for premium gas and expensive gas has me moving away from that car. The Taos is the cheapest, but the model in our price range is from the first year of production and doesn't have great reviews. The Seltos feels a little lightweight and because of Kia's popularity, may be overvalued (which is also the reason we aren't looking at Toyotas or Hondas). The Trax is in great shape and almost new, but only has a 3 cylinder engine.
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I started writing this post last week, and even though it is pretty dull, I'm going to go ahead and press publish because I spent way too much time looking online for cars coming up for sale and researching reviews and visiting car dealerships to test drive. I wrote this to help with my decision process. My husband and daughter would have purchased the first car we test drove - which was a Kia Niro, a hybrid that happened to be a great price. But because I didn't know anything about it and because I still thought we could find something for $15K that was under 10 years old, we didn't commit, and it sold the day before I decided it was a decent car for a fair price. So for weeks I kept looking for something similar. I'm not sure why it was so hard for me to commit. Cars don't last forever, and they are not my priority in life, but I let car shopping overwhelm my attention for a few weeks - Hours I can't reclaim. This is a frustration I have struggled with for years. As my husband often reminds me, time is money and sometimes I need to give up looking for the deal and move on because I can't buy back this time. Soon our daughter will be grown and gone like her siblings.
We finally decided on the Trax. The price and condition were basically what we were looking for. I hope it proves safe and reliable. She'll be driving off in a few weeks for her junior year of college. The car may drive her farther from us, but I'm also hoping it also will carry her home more often, where I will be waiting for her with open arms!
