New (to us) Car!!!! in Life in General

We bought a ‘22 Hyundai Tucson yesterday!

I was sitting at my computer recently and thought to myself “Wait I haven’t really checked the car market north of us. What’s out there?”

In my defense, northern Oklahoma is basically a wasteland.

So I entered a new zipcode north of us and found a Tucson at some random Honda dealership. It’s silver, exactly the right trim/package. 2022 Hyundai Tucson SEL Convenience Package. 27k miles on it. Priced okay, was hoping to talk em down a little. Well I call em up at 8am and he says he’s got the car and he’ll get it ready for me.

He told me it was just traded in from some old lady who didn’t like all the buttons and screens. I’m thinking “aight buddy, likely story”. I wake up Jessica and make the 1 hour drive to the dealership.

Lemme tell you something, I’ve been looking at a lot of Tucsons and this was far and away the nicest looking one. It looked liked it was barely touched. The back had all of the little mats and covers that are usually missing (I guess people take em out and lose em). THERE WAS FUCKING PLASTIC PEEL STILL COVERING SOME PARTS OF THE CAR. There were only a couple of tiny paint marks that I could find, and they all looked like they’d buff out.

I now totally believe the little old lady story. (also the bluetooth setting showed “Loretta’s iPhone” at the top of the list… def old lady name.)

Anyway on the way to the dealership I told Jessica “When you’re test driving I give you permission to go full bitch mode and point out every little thing you don’t like. I want them to think they need to work hard to sell it to us.”

She failed so hard. She was giggly and smiling the entire drive. She fucking loved the car. I was like, “RELAX GIRL BE COOL JESUS” haha.

We had driven other Tucsons but this was the first one with the convenience package and it really was a lot nicer.

So we get back to the dealership, ready to haggle the price down a little bit. To my surprise, they were basically unwilling to negotiate, outside maybe a couple hundred bucks. I was shocked, like “for real, you just want me to pay the listing price on this?” I had a bunch of other listings that were more miles on em and such but way way cheaper and they were like “look we listed this car at market value and that’s what we’re selling it for”

I walked out and drove home. I have never experienced that before. Like they were very nice about it but damn no room at all to get that price down more? Well needless to say Jessica was extremely upset, because as I feared, she fell in love with the car and wanted to just buy it. But I was trying to be a good shopper and get a good deal for us.

And they were dead serious, they didn’t try to stop me and even a day later they never called back. In the car sales world, that’s their way of saying “you’re dead to us.”

Well I get home and start thinking about it. The other cars listed for less typically had more miles, a minor accident on the record, and definitely showed more minor scuffs/scratches. But I was willing to accept all that if the price was significantly lower. So I start calling these dealerships back to work on price. Up until this point, I hadn’t tried to negotiate any prices, just checking if the car is available.

What do you know… they all basically were firm on their prices too. Some of them gave me the “lemme run it by management”, but just never called back, as if I was wasting their time.

So, tail between my legs, I called back the first dealership and accepted the deal. I felt stupid but I mean Jessica loved it so much I had to swallow my pride to make it happen for her.

And honestly, the whole process of buying the car was really easy. They didn’t try to do any bullshit add ons, they didn’t harass me about getting my own financing beforehand, they weren’t overly pushy with the extended warranties. We walked in and had keys in hand within 25 minutes. I’d recommend them but I don’t know anyone who lives in fucking nowhere north Oklahoma haha.

Speaking of financing, what a fucking AWFUL time to get a car loan. Like my credit ain’t perfect but I got a 740, so not to shabby right?

I call around to a few credit unions and we’re talking like 8.5% AT BEST. WHAT?!?! I remember when I bought my car 9 years back (my score was like 640 at the time) I got 6.5% and I thought I was getting shafted!

Of course we didn’t really have much choice here. Gotta get Jessica a car, and while I could have found a super cheap old car and just paid for it

Well anyway with the car being a good price and us putting $5,000 down (that’s how much we expect to get from insurance when they total out her car), the payments are only $360 for 5 years. And our insurance only went up about $45. Jessica has never had a car payment (her grandpa bought the CRV as a graduation present like 13 years ago), so she was says “it’s gonna suck to have a car payment now”.

Girl

… $360 is a DAMN good payment. Both of our folks pay over $700/month for their cars! My only regret is if we bought 3 years ago with better rates, we’d have gotten a payment of about $310.

Anyway, so that’s all done finally and I can put it out of my mind. I’m a tiny bit jealous she has this fancy new car and I’m driving my same old car but I’m doing my best to just be happy for her and who knows maybe the finances will work out soon that I can get me something.

(that Hyundai Ioniq 5 looking REAL nice).

Last updated May 11, 2024