Whirlwind of a week!!

This week has definitely been packed with activity! It started out innocently enough with DH's parents leaving Monday morning. Shortly after they left DH took off for work. Not too long after he left for work I heard the garage door open again and he came walking in the door. My husband's car has been nearing the end of its life for some time and during the last week or two the gears have been getting harder and harder to shift. On Monday my husband got as far as the freeway on his way to work and didn't feel comfortable driving any farther in his car. So we decided to spend the day researching how to go about shopping for a new car. My husband found a great website, carbuyingtips.com, packed with lots of great info on how and where to shop for a car.

The first thing we wanted to do was to go to a car dealer and just test drive a couple of cars to see what was out there. We have talked about buying a car for some time now and had been toying with the idea of buying a brand new car off of the lot. Luckily my parents were available and willing to work with us throughout the week so that we didn't have to lug the kids with us to the car lots. So we called up my parents and they were willing to come and watch the kids while we drove to the lot.

We looked at some cars and test drove a Honda Civic and a Toyota Corolla. My husband has been really wanting to get a car that was going to be dependable and last us for many years to come. After test driving these cars and looking at some of the sticker prices on them we headed for home.

That night and the next day we looked around some at our options and on Tuesday we decided to try out one of the online sites listed at carbuyingtips.com, invoicedealers.com. What you do is select what type of car you want and then the website sends your info to local dealers in the area and then they contact you - so we tried it for the Toyota Corolla. Within just a few minutes we had a Salt Lake Toyota dealer, Mark Miller Toyota, calling us for some info and to give us a price on a car - significantly lower than what we had looked at the day before. Not too long after that we had another dealer in Bountiful, Menlove Toyota, call us with a car and a similar offer. So we called up my parents again and they graciously came and watched the kids while we drove up to Salt Lake to take a look at the first car. We drove the car and had a good experience with the salesman there. He was totally different from what you expect from a car salesman and told us straight up what the take home price would be for that car. We decided to skip the second dealer because the car was almost the exact same model and we didn't feel a need to test drive another one. We told the salesman that we would keep in touch and that we wanted to think about it some more.

Later that afternoon we started the process of applying for a loan through my credit union back in Virginia in case we decided to finance some of our car purchase. We also decided to try the online process with the Honda Civic and see what kind of offers we received. Well, we only heard from one Honda dealer and they sounded like they wouldn't be willing to negotiate from their offer so we decided to go the Toyota route since we were offered cheaper prices by more than $1000.

On Wednesday my husband went to work and I ended up having to drive down to his office to sign some papers for our loan. After that my husband was contacted by the Menlove salesman and asked how he could get us up there. We were kind of leaning towards just going with the Mark Miller dealer because it seemed like a good deal and the two dealers had pretty similar prices but the Mark Miller car had a few extra features. The Menlove salesman said that he would then add on these features at no cost to us and offer a lower price. Then my husband called the Mark Miller salesman and asked if he could match the price. We basically had the 2 dealers going back and forth until the Bountiful salesman said that he had gone as low as he could go without manager approval but he would talk to the manager and then call my husband back in 5 minutes. In the meantime I had called my parents to see if they could watch the kids in case we needed to drive up to the Bountiful dealer. The offer that we got was almost too good to believe. My husband called back the Salt Lake salesman and he couldn't believe the offer either - he told us to be careful that they didn't give us a lesser car and that they didn't add on any hidden fees. So we dropped the kids off at my parents, drove up to Bountiful, test drove the car and got the walk out the door price from them. There were 2 features that the car didn't have but they weren't willing to budge on adding them at no cost because the price was so low - we would have to add them at our cost if we wanted them. We decided to go home and think about it that night and elected to not put down a $500 down payment because it was non-refundable. We were afraid at the price quoted that we would end up signing for something that wasn't what we thought it would be and then be out $500 if we backed out.

On Thursday my husband went in to work and called the Salt Lake salesman to see if he could match the price - my husband liked the color on the car at the Salt Lake dealer better than the Bountiful location. He was told that that was as low as he could go so we called the Bountiful dealer to tell them we would be in in the afternoon to pick up the car! In the meantime we got the pre-approval on our car loan and all of the salesmen were quite shocked by the low interest rate we were getting for our loan - 3.75%.

So Thursday afternoon I drove down to pick my husband up from work early, picked the kids up from school and then we all drove up to sign the papers and drive home with the car! The salesmen at Menlove Toyota were true to their word and didn't try any last minute tricks or switches on us. The price was exactly as we expected and they didn't try getting us to add on anything extra - except for an extra 3 year warranty that we are still considering - it's refundable if we end up not needing it during the length of the warranty. I must say that it still doesn't seem real! We started looking for a car on Monday and drove home with a brand new 2009 Toyota Corolla on Thursday. The car is awesome and we got it for a great price as well - several thousand dollars below the listed MSRP!Now we just need to get rid of our old car somehow - any takers???