Friday, July 10, 2009

I Gotta New Set of Wheels!

The teal blue Dodge Caravan died. It died while I was at a friend's house for her birthday party. So Kyle had to come pick us up. Later, we came back and replaced the distributor cap. The minivan started up right away. Yay! I was able to drive in home. The next morning we are getting in the minivan to go to church, it wouldn't start. So we had to take two other vehicles to church because we can't all fit in the El Camino or the Neon.

We have a big trip to a family reunion in Nevada planned and possibly going to Wyoming to. The choice, to spend money to fix the minivan, rent a van for the trip or buy a new minivan. We decide to try to buy a new minivan.

We looked at three different dealers. The first one had a 2007 Dodge Grand Caravan. It was blue, had 2 bench seats, fabric upholstery. It had a/c, luggage rack and lots of storage space in the back. It had 44,000 miles on it. They were asking $12,900. The next one was a 2006 Dodge Grand Caravan. It was silver, had 2 bench seats, fabric upholstery. It had a/c, luggage rack, lots of storage and a DVD player & screen. We took it for a test drive. It was really nice. We especially liked the DVD player and the low miles. It had 33,900 miles on it. They were asking $11,600. The third minivan was a 2003 Oldsmobile Silhouette. It was red and it had leather upholstery, captain chairs instead of a middle bench, a/c, DVD player & screen, luggage rack, and not as much storage as the other 2 vans. It had 61,000 miles on it and they were asking $7995.

The decision was hard. We narrowed it done to either the silver or the red. We liked that they both had the DVD. We liked the low mileage of the silver, but also like the features of the red.
But we finally decided on which one, then it was just a matter of getting an auto loan.

We tried one credit union. They seemed to have changed some loan policies that made it difficult to get a no-money down loan from them. So, we tried another credit union that was recommended by one of the car dealers. The second credit union was a dream to work with. There didn't seem to be any problems with the vehicle we were choosing, there weren't problems with our debt-to-income ratio. The whole process was painless.

So which vehicle did we pick? The Oldsmobile Silhouette Premiere edition.

5 comments:

  1. you'll have to let me know which credit union you used in case i have to go that route soon too!

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  2. We used Nebo Credit Union. They have locations in Spanish Fork, Springville and Payson. We had tried at Utah Community Credit Union but they are the ones with new policies. The other one that was recommended by a car dealer that we hadn't checked out was America First Credit Union.

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  3. so now it is "over the river and through the woods...."

    Like the car and can't wait to see you. Love, MOM

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