Our New Vehicle (Day 3725 - 2/5/20)

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Stephen talks about how they had gotten to 206,000 miles on the 2004 Ford Escape. He had gotten the car in 2008 with 60,000 miles, so they put 140,000 miles on the car over 12 years. They had this car when they were still in college. Stephen doesn't feel sentimental about the car, but he appreciates it. He talks about how people have been encouraging them to get a new car for years. They both hope this car lasts about 15 years at most.

Their new car is the 2020 Subaru Forester Sport which has a lot of features. Over the years, they have rented a lot of cars so Stephen has gotten a chance to experience these features before. This car is safer, more fuel efficient, and has a lot of new technology. They decided to lease the car, but they plan on ultimately owning it. They've been at the Subaru Car Dealership for about 4 hours.

Currently, they are planning to go have dinner and get groceries. Their new car only requires the key to be inside the car, so Stephen can keep his keys on his belt loop. Stephen says that it's going to take him a while to get used to all this technology. When they had the Ford Escape, Mal was using it to commute to work. But, now they both work from home so this car might last longer since they won't be using it as much. They are both excited about the new car and really like the look of it.

Back at home, Stephen was talking about how they weren't planning on getting a new car today. They went to the dealership thinking that they might buy a car, but they weren't sure yet. Both of them had been doing research and they had agreed on a gray car. Stephen had test driven a Subaru Forester and the reliability ratings were high for Subaru, so they decided on the Subaru Forester. They also really liked how the Sport looked. While looking at the cars, the salesperson pointed out that all the accents were all black, so you don't get to see that if you choose a darker colored car. Stephen had been considering getting a black car and the accents of the car were orange which made the car look like a Halloween car. Mallory had wanted a white car since dirt won't show up as much and it will reflect the light which will make the car temperature cooler than it would with a darker colored car. The dealership also didn't have any gray cars despite having every other color. So, all these reasons made Stephen want to get a white car.

Stephen is excited that they will have a car that won't break down. He doesn't know if he will do a full car tour. Stephen talks about how this car is pretty stylish for Subaru cars in general. He mentions that the Ford Escape also had a sportier look. Stephen says that he realized just how much technology was in the new car while driving it home. But, he still can't bring himself to trust it after not using the technology in the Ford Escape for so long. So, he will have to slowly adjust to using the technology. He and Mal had agreed that he will still back-up the regular way by looking behind him while Mal checks the rear view camera on the screen. He also likes the automatic lights that turn off and on depending on the time of day.

Stephen says that they stopped by a restaurant to get a curbside pickup. He didn't want the car lights shining into the restaurant, so he manually turned it off. But, when they were leaving he forgot to turn them on since he was relying on the automatic light system. The car also has as system to keep the car between the lines on the road which he thinks is a good idea from a safety perspective. It also has lights on the side mirrors that illuminates when a car is in your blind spot. Also, there is an audible beep in the car when you have the turn signals on.

Stephen thought that he handled the negotiation process well. He hasn't had experience doing negotiations for a car, but he stayed relatively calm. Mal has a tendency to get anxious and she was fidgety during the entire negotiation. Mal says that she felt uncomfortable being in that office. Stephen says that he is worried about how relaxed he has in these types of situations. He feels like he would just calmly evacuate if their house ever caught on fire. When they first got there, they requested to see the Costco pricing sheet. They are Costco members and Costco has an automobile program. They were able to instantly get $2,000 off the sticker price, but Stephen says that it won't always be $2,000 off all the time. The salesperson made them an offer based around the pricing sheet, but Stephen insisted on seeing the sheet. He is glad that they didn't have to haggle to get that $2,000 off since he hates haggling. Stephen wished that cars just had a set price instead of having to haggle it down.

They used the Kelley Blue Book and Edmunds websites to get a range of what is a fair deal based on the year, make, model, and accessories of the car. Stephen decided to try and get the car at the fair market price which was in the middle of that range. The Costco price wasn't the price Stephen was looking for and he told the salesperson what price he was looking for and where he got the information from. They had been looking at cars on the show room floor and they realizes that the cars there had more accessories than they would've put in there if they had customizes it. It was $500 worth of extra accessories they wouldn't have put in there. The salesperson considered Stephen's price to be too low and took it to the finance department. Stephen says that he is not trying to cheat them out of money and he understands that they have to make money, but he considers it to be a fair price.

The salesperson brought the price down lower than the Costco price, but Stephen wanted it to be $1,000 lower. Eventually, they brought it down so that it was $200 more than Stephen wanted to pay. Stephen had not mentioned that he was trading in his car and they knew that the value of the Ford Escape was only $350 after doing research. So, they weren't expecting to get much money from it. Stephen says that if they sold it privately they would've gotten at most $1,000, but he didn't want a person coming back angry about issues relating to the car. The salesperson took a look at their car and estimated the trade-in value as $800, but decided to round it up to $1,000 for them. They were both surprised since they weren't expecting to get that much for it. Finally, Stephen agreed to the price.

Mal says that everyone at the dealership was really nice, but the negotiation part just made her anxious. Stephen says that there is a certain mental image about cars salesman being unsavory, but these people were anything but that. They were very transparent about where the prices were coming from. Stephen also read every document in order to understand everything and he took out a calculator to make sure all the prices were correct. He felt like it helped that they made the deal at 7:00 PM, the closing time of the dealership, so everyone wanted to go home. Then, he talks about some of the issues the old car was having like oil leaks, weird noises while going over speed bumps, and squeaking. Stephen says that it feels weird that the odometer only has a single digit number for the amount of miles the car has which is 9 miles. He hopes that he will be able to get more than 200,000 miles on this car since he was able to get 200,000 miles on the Ford Escape. Stephen mentions that everyone is coming over for Lunch Bunch tomorrow and they will be playing board games.