The Swagger Wagon!

Well, I guess we joined the ranks of all the "cool kids" today and joined the "Swagger Wagon" Family.  Since our +5 will soon be a +6, my beloved jeep would no longer due. We've been trying to sell it for a few months now and this past week it sold leaving us with an immediate need for a new vehicle.

Can I just say, even as we are avid Dave Ramsey fans and have been debt free (mins a mortgage) for over a year now, the temptation still stood to get something "nicer" and go back into just a little bit of debt for a new car.  Now, I do think there are times that we are okay with taking a detour from "the plan".  I think we made the right choice to go on on the trip to Disneyland last summer to run the races even if it slowed us down a little bit on our goals. I think it is totally okay to take money out of our savings to help fund our adoption even if it means we will have to spend time going back and replenishing that afterwards.  However, in this specific instance I really just felt convicted that we needed to stick to our plan and pay cash. The problem was, we just weren't finding what we were looking for.  I was searching in a 500 mile radius of where we live and still not finding what we wanted. Everything that was nice and affordable seemed to have a bad title. Some models had poor reviews.  I was looking for a very specific car with a very specific price range and coming up totally empty.  This has been going on all week and I have spent far too many hours just trying to find anything that fit the bill.  One car is not really working all that well for us but we were willing to do what we had to. 

Then this little baby popped up on our radar just a short distance from home:

A few emails, Peter taking her for a quick test drive, a quick round of negotiating with pick up scheduled for tomorrow and boom. We're the (proud?!?) owners of the exact type of swagger wagon I wanted and best of all - paid for with cash (and some leftover to spare!).  I still will miss my jeep, but this ride with our family of 6 will be sweeeeeet!