I picked up my new 2013 Prius III w/Solar Sunroof yesterday. I feel strange, I guess I should be happy and excited, but I'm having buyers remorse today. I opened the garage door and stood and looked at my new silver sled, and my gut turned over, I feel like I should have bought another old beater for cash, this is too much. I never had a new car before, I've only old beaters for these past 35 years of driving. My 20 yr old car's engine gave up the ghost in rush hour traffic on the freeway last month while my Fiance' was driving, lucky nobody was hurt in the slow motion accident that resulted, but she was shook up, so I had to get something decent this time. I think I got an OK deal, probably not the best, but I did what I could to try and get the best deal I could, ~$25.5k before taxes, etc. I'm sure someone will probably say, "You could have got a much better deal from blah blah blah.." oh well. I put a little over half down, the remainder on a 5 year loan, I'll try to pay it off by the end of the year. All of my financial education said this was not a smart thing to do, buying a new car, and using a loan on top of that! But used Prii here in the San Francisco Bay area are not cheap and they usually have a lot of miles. The delta between the new and used price is so small that it doesn't seem to make sense to buy used. I take care of my things and hold onto them forever, so I'm hoping this will make sense in the long run. My commute is about 8 miles to work, I try to ride my bike to work every day that I can, so I probably won't put more than 12k miles a year, but we'll see. Maybe now that I have a car I can trust, we'll take more trips. My Fiance is excited to have a car we can use to drive down to SoCal to see her kin, so no more expensive rental cars! I'm off to read all these manuals to figure out how to use all the features so I don't break it, wish me luck! Let'sGo!
You do what you have to in order to have reliable transportation. Don't let it bug you. You make the best choice you can at the time.
You won't regret the purchase......fill up the tank, take a couple of road trips and enjoy the MPG performance of your new wheels. Congratulations!
Welcome and congratulations. I'll give you a couple of refills and you will be patting yourself on the back for making such a smart decision !
Thanks everyone! I feel much better this evening, I took my lady on a very nice ride over to Santa Cruz this afternoon, so far so good, all systems checked are a go.
Welcome! I can really relate to you. I haven't had a new car in 23 years, and my wife has never had one until now. We were pretty freaked out at first also. But now we are loving our Prius. I'm sure you will as well. I also always paid cash for cars. That was my upbringing. Debt is bad, and car loans are the worst -- as they devalue quickly. But as we were ready to write the check the finance guy asked us several times, "Are you sure you don't want 0% for 3 years? You must have a better use for that money during that time." My wife and I stepped out for a few minutes to discuss; and he did have a point. I can earn quite a bit more investing it. So we did that. My only regret is getting the papers in the mail...no pink slip. Bank is really the owner of the car until the loan is paid obviously. Kind of depressing. But my TSLA stock went up like 15% in three weeks, so that cheered me up ;-) Don't worry too much about breaking it; Toyota is very conservative in engineering everything. It's pretty bullet proof.
Ha I'm in the exact opposite boat. I've always had relatively new cars and wanted a prius for some time now, but I could never justify adding another car, so I just recently picked up a cheap beater. Now I'm feeling like I should have spent a little more on one that was a little newer. You have it now; it's as pristine as it will ever be, and as long as you maintain it properly it should last you a very long time. Your insurance rates may actually be a bit lower because of the extra safety / security features. Having good transportation is a really liberating feeling. As far as loans go, if you can get a longer loan period at the same rate, then there are few reasons not to, assuming you aren't penalized for paying early. Be diligent and pay as much as you can every month, and you'll pay it off in the same amount of time. If times become tough, you can fall back to the lower minimum payment and still get by without late fees or credit problems. Oh and putting 1/2 down and planning on paying it off by the end of the year at 0% financing? As far as financing goes, it doesn't get a whole lot smarter than that. There are plenty of people who wind up 5 years down the road owing more than the car is worth. It sounds like you know what you're doing.
