My Biggest Purchase

I've been pondering this purchase for a long while and really about a month ago, had decided I would just stick with what I had, but then I found sometime that I thought I could afford...so I did it. I bought a new car! Not the car I thought I was going to get, but a totally different one that I thought I would never buy....(go to the bathroom, get a drink, this may be a long read!)
The last time I took my car into the shop, I was talking to the mechanic about if it was time for me to get a new car or if I should keep putting money into the car I already had. He suggested I start looking and if I had money, in October, when my car didn't pass emissions (cause it wasn't going to) then I could buy a new one. So I drove it for the rest of the summer and on all my road trips, I was checking out cars and wondering what I should get. Each time I decided on a car, I would check out the price and then have to go back to the drawing board, as the car was always too much!
As I was driving away from a girlfriends house about a month ago, I saw a Saturn Vue outside of someone's house for sale and fell in love. It was an 04, but that is all I knew, cause it was raining and I wasn't getting out to check out the price. The following day I went back up there to check it out again and it was gone. Sold I presumed, so I hit craigslist.org and I found a few I might be interested in, but nothing I just had to have.
Then last week came along and my car decided to turn on a new light telling me that my E brake was on all the time, when I knew it wasn't. That is when the car search intensified an I happen to find an 05 Saturn Vue down in Puyllaup for around 10,000. I thought that was a lot, but I figured I could get them down to $8,000. So off I went to find me a new car. When I got down to Puyllaup, I couldn't find any addresses on the buildings, so I guessed that Korum, was the place I was looking for, parked the car, and walked in and that is where I met Don.
He said yes, they had the Vue and we were off to lot 4 to find it.

While we walked over there, we talked about the Vue and realized that the one we were going to look at really wasn't the one I wanted to look at, but I decided to look at it anyway. After we found it, we took it for a drive. It was pretty amazing, except for being dirty. We went back to the dealer and I was ready to sign the papers, but the dealer said they wouldn't sell it to me, because it had too many things wrong with it.

NUTS!!!

So then of course they bring in the suave, overly chatty "top salesman" to sell me on an 04 Mercury Mountaineer that was only $12,000. We took it for a short test drive and then came back. I was up front with him in telling him that I only had a certain amount of money and I was expecting at least $1, 500 for my trade-in and if he couldn't give me that, then I was going to walk. He told me I was going to make him work and that is when I started to hyperventilate and wanted to go home. It was a huge car and I totally didn't see myself in it...yet I waited to see the numbers and when they came out. I was paying $10, 800 out the door and getting $2,500 for my car, which was probably worth $1,500...Therefore I ended up with a new car!

I'm the new proud owner of an 04 Mercury Mountaineer. It's a V6 with tinted windows, sunroof, leather seats, 6 disc changer, heated seats, and room for 7.

It's a nice ride.