New Baby = DeSpains Need a New Car

First of all, THANK YOU for the comments you all left yesterday on my post. I wasn’t expecting the feedback I received AT ALL. In fact, I was moreso expecting complete crickets due to my sheer rambling (that I thought might come across as confusing and unorganized; I’m not saying it wasn’t.) 😉

As a writer, it’s really neat when you enjoy writing for others who enjoy reading, so thank you for sharing with me in the way so many of you did yesterday. I am so appreciative.

It’s currently nap time/quiet time on Thursday afternoon, and I’ve decided to sit down to write a blog post first before tackling other mundane tasks on my to-do list (I make a new one each morning), and it feels great to sit down for an hour and do some writing before eventually getting up and moving on with my day. Ah. Like I said yesterday, sometimes you just need to shake things up a bit in your routine in order to find some renewed joy.

Still working on that new daily rhythm, so if you’d like, I’ll share what I/we come up with soon.

Today’s topic = new car shopping! And by new car, I definitely mean new minivan.

Jamie and I are planners, so it comes as no surprise that we immediately freaked about having to buy a new car within 10 minutes of seeing the word “pregnant” show up on a pregnancy test. We are always thinking about logistics. 😉

When we bought my then dream car, my Jeep Grand Cherokee, back in January 2013, we agreed to keep it for at least 10 years. It was a good $5k more than the budget we’d set, but we were both working full-time jobs, had no kids (though I’d find out I was pregnant with Hadley two weeks later), had a cheap mortgage, and felt like we could totally afford the hefty monthly payments for a few years (mind you we were practically throwing my entire paycheck each month at my student loans and were still about nine months away from paying it off, and we’d purchased Jamie a brand new truck just 11 months prior, and we had monthly payments on that too.) WE WERE VERY FINANCIALLY SAVVY 25 YEAR OLDS (except the opposite).

So after taking several years to dig out of the reckless debt we’d needlessly gotten ourselves in to (we did not both need brand new cars at the same time, but OF COURSE WE DID), we decided that we would never get ourselves in deep car debt like that again.

New plan = drive these cars into the ground (they’re both perfect for families of four), save well for the next 5-10 years, and then buy gently used cars in cash.

Well I don’t even know why the DeSpains make concrete plans because they always (!) go awry. Duh.

Hellooooo baby #3. Mama needs a new car because my Jeep can only handle three car seats if they’re all teeny tiny, and even then, it’s going to be stinkin’ tight! We need a third row.

When we looked at how much we have saved that’s allotted for future cars (again, that we thought we’d be buying 5+ years from now! Ha!) plus the trade-in value of my jeep, we came up with a budget for a used vehicle that pretty much limits us to Toyota Siennas and Hondas Odysseys that are around 2-4 years old with less than 45k miles. We were honestly shocked at how far our money can go with a van. Score.

February is a quiet month for us, so that’s looking like a good month to bite the bullet, turn over my beloved Jeep, and becoming a minivan mama.

Everybody keeps telling me that I’m going to absolutely love the minivan life. We’ll see! I’m so excited that we’re already rockin’ and rollin’ through this second trimester, so there’s no time like the present to knock off big things to do before baby comes, and I’d say buying a new family vehicle is pretty high on the “must do” list.

Let’s chat!

Are you living the minivan life? What kind do you have, and why do you like or dislike it?

Do you have leather seats, and do you think they’re a must? We believe they’re a must, but it’s almost proving to be difficult to find vans with leather.

Also, do you have rear entertainment for your kiddos? We’re not thinking this is a necessity since the kids can use tablets on long trips, but maybe we don’t know what we’re missing?