No vacation goes unpunished, Part II

When we last saw our pathetic heroine, she was whining about how totally unfair life is, and how extra unfair it is when you have to deal with a bunch of bullshit right after a vacation...

While both of these statements are undoubtedly true, I'm happy to report that things are looking up! Strangely, as soon as I stopped feeling sorry for myself and started trying to address all the things that were stressing me out, it eased my suffering immensely! I wonder if this means I'm turning into a Type A, squinny sort of person?

As I mentioned at the end of my last post, I began by sitting down and taking a "back of the envelope" look at our budget - I totted up how much we both make per month, and then subtracted all our regular monthly bills just to get a baseline idea. I wasn't worried that our bills would be higher than what we make, but I certainly had myself worked up to the point that finding we only had 200.00 left over to live on, pay for daycare, and make a car payment out of would not have surprised me.

Thank GOD that was not the case. Turns out we buy a bunch of crap we don't need, go out to eat obscenely often, and don't even get me started on the maternity clothes purchases, DVDs and iTunes! Looks like we can afford another car payment (even though it kills me - it was so nice only having one!) and can probably afford daycare too when it comes to that point. I'm not saying it won't hurt, but we shouldn't have to live on peanut butter either.

With this new outlook on our financial life, I sallied forth to the Credit Union to get pre-approved for a car loan, and find out how much car we could afford. Was delighted to discover that the bank has this super cool thing called an "Easy Rider" loan: The idea is that you do all the loan paperwork beforehand with the bank, and then they present you with a "blank check" good for the maximum amount of the loan! This is super cool because it removes the ENTIRE CONVERSATION about financing from the negotiations at the car dealership. Basically the dealer has to treat the transaction as a cash deal and you're only negotiating the price of the car itself. This turned out to be an awesome and powerful tool!

We took my little check to a used car dealership, and found a 2008 Nissan Versa hatchback that only had 10,000 miles on it! It was really pretty funny too, because the sales guy was so conditioned to talking loan amounts that he only wanted to discuss the car in terms of what my monthly payment would likely be! I had to ask him twice to talk in terms of what the car price was because I already knew what my monthly payments would be depending on the final amount of the loan. (Also funny that every time he tried quoting a monthly payment to me it was WAY higher than it actually would have been based on my credit rating...) Anyway, after about 3 hours of back and forth, we got the car for the price we wanted, and managed to firmly convince the finance manager that no we didn't want to finance through them at a higher interest rate, signed our little check, and drove out of there!

Here's what it looks like:

How cute and squabby is that!? Plus it's a six-speed which Hubby says makes it very fuel efficient :)

Crisis 1 solved...breathing restored...now maybe if I eat a damn brownie I can face daycare and house!