Stumble it!

This weekend was difficult.

My wife and I wanted to take the kids out to eat to celebrate my wife’s birthday on Saturday. We quickly realized that my didn’t have enough money to do it…but by then our kids were looking forward to going out. So when we said we’d changed our minds, the kids started crying and screaming. These are the joys of being penniless I guess.

One thing I’ve considered is getting rid of the car – my Mazda6, but the payment is so low, and it’s so good on gas, that it wouldn’t make much sense.

Buying the Mazda was one of the smartest purchases I ever made – I was able to buy a brand new $23,000 car for only $15,900. I need to take my mind off of things for a while, so we’re going to go down memory lane – and I wanted to share this with everyone. This is a great way to get thousands off the price of a brand new car.

For starters – I shopped online, and found online discounts through the local Mazda dealership. This was the car that I found, and the color that I wanted:

The reason I chose Mazda was simple:

They were sport, and I wanted a “cool” car.
They weren’t overly expensive even at full sticker price.
Most importantly – they were offering a $6000 rebate on last year’s model.
And there’s the secret. Shopping last years model made all the difference. If you’re willing to accept that the care was test drove for up to 200 miles or so – you can get thousands knocked off the price of the car. Sometimes, as in this case, you can buy a new car for the price of what they would sell used.

When I walked into the dealership – I had a list of all of the discounts available for the car, the online discount and the rebate. Starting out – the price was already far under sticker.

When I sat down with the salesman, I pointed out immediately that I was shopping for used cars, but because of the discounts offered, I was willing to buy new. Since I knew that there was a $6000 rebate, plus a $500 online discount, I knew that the price would be around $16500. So I offered $1000 less than that. The salesman practically had a heart attack.

After doing their little dance where he made a show of talking to the manager and “begging” for your deal, he came back and said they could go as low as $16,300. I’ll be honest – that was a great deal…but I was in the mood to get an *awesome* deal. So I said that if they didn’t come down at least another $400 I’d have to keep shopping around.

Another little dance took place…and then he came back and shook my hand.

“Sir…congratulations, you’ve got yourself a new car.”

Of course – for anyone who’s ever bought a car, the sale is only the beginning of the scam. Then you need to go in back and talk to the financial guy, where he tries to sell you worthless insurance or a “maintenance plan”. After doggedly declining every single “extra” they tried to throw on top of the balance – I finally drove out of the dealership with a brand new Mazda 6, of a different color than I had wanted, and 300 miles on it…but still brand new, and $7100 under sticker price.

Now there’s a deal you simply can’t beat.

If I could manage to be that smart with the rest of my budget…my wife and I would be millionaires already. There’s always a way – with ingenuity and creativity, although times can be very tough and appear bleak…there’s always a way for folks who are thrifty and shrewd.

Even through these dark times – we will survive…we’ll be ok

The saga of Jack’s family ( to be continued)