Wow. What a week.

It has been one of the busiest weeks ever. Long story short, I worked a bunch of hours, the wife's car got totalled, we have to switch to a healthier diet, and we bought a car. Now for the long story long.

We heard last Saturday from the insurance agency. Here car was totalled out, but because she didn't drive it a lot, we got $4050, then minus the deductible, so we cleared $3050. Then we were faced with a new dilemma, do we exactly replace her car, which we could have done with the money we got, or do we step up a little step and get a four door and finance?

She did have a 1999 2 door Sunfire. We got it in 2001, and it served us very well. It never needed any real work, and got us where we needed to go. But, it was going to need to go in about 1 to 2 years to accommodate a family in about 3-4 years and still have some trade in value. At that point we will need to be looking for a 4 door. Well, we decided to step up a notch and finance (some of) a car now that will fit our needs for the next 5-7 years, instead of buying a car without financing now and not have it really fit our needs now or later, but not finance.

So the wife went online and started looking last weekend, thinking that we would be able to go car shopping during the week. I thought so too. Then we found out that lots are not open past 6. What?!? How do you sell cars then, good sir? We did find out that lots were open late on some days of the week, so I figured we go on that day. Well, work intervened, and I worked late every day this week, so we were not able to really go looking until Friday.

Friday rolls around, I have the day off, and we get a list together. 1 car is in the opposite direction by about 30 minutes, so we do that one first. Well it is a small lot, and we get there only to find out the car we went to look at had been sold. We go to another lot, and the car's not there either. You gotta be kidding me! Update your damn websites. So at this point the lots were closing because we got a late start, and we only made it over to the neighboring lot to see if she liked the styling of one of the cars, even though the car was $12000. We knew we weren't going to get it, and so did the dealer, so we sat in it, and the wife liked it, and we home with the equivalent of blue mufflers.

So we got a plan together for the next day, went to see the style she liked and got it. Almost. Since we are still trying to fix the financials, the bank needs to talk to my HR company to verify employment before we can finalize anything. But we are able to stop looking. We ended up getting a 2002 Ford Focus ZX5 for $7200, at $200 a month for 4 years. Way to go bad credit! We'll be paying $200 a month for a year, and then use next years bonus money to pay off the car in full. At least this time we have a plan.

More on the health stuff in a later post.

Don't forget the Carnival of credit stories will be hosted here tomorrow!