Hello hello! I am a day late because it has been such a crazy few days! If you read my blog a couple months ago, you would know that I was on the search for a new car. If you haven’t read that blog, I’ll link it here! Searching for a new car has been the craziest experience ever. My dad and I have been looking for months and I have learned a lot along the way. Lets get into what happened.
My First Car
I bought my first car about 4 years ago from a local used car dealership. It was a 2007 Saturn Ion that had about 80,000 miles on it. When I first bought it, I was thrilled and honestly it was an amazing first car. I barely had to get it fixed (except toward the end of when I had it), it was pretty decent on gas and it got me where I needed to go. After 4 years, my car started to have some problems and that’s when I knew it was time to start looking.
Some Tips
- START LOCAL!!
So, this was something I will never do again! When I started looking for cars, we used cars.com and truecar.com. These websites are awesome and I would highly recommend using them when looking at cars because they give you a lot of information about different vehicles. I made the mistake of setting the distance from home to 40 or 50 miles, so a lot of the cars were from really far away. This led to me looking at cars an hour away from my house when the car I ended up buying was only about 5 minutes from home, but it was one of the last cars I looked at. So my advice would be to look at cars at dealerships close to home first, and then move further away if you don’t see anything you like.
2. Don’t be afraid to ask questions!
Ask all the questions you can think of, because you are about to spend a lot of money on this car. Test drive everything and make sure you like the way it drives. Also, it helps to have questions in mind ahead of time to make the process go a little smoother when you get there.
3. Have cars you are going to look at ahead of time
For the first place I went to, I didn’t have any cars that I wanted to look at and just told the dealer some of the features I wanted. This took forever! It goes by much faster when you have the exact car you want to look at. That way, all you have to do when you get there is show them the car you want to see and you are done.
4. Call the dealership and make sure the car you want to see is there before you go
There were quite a few times where we would go to look at a car and it was sold but their website wasn’t updated yet. That can be really frustrating! So make sure to just give a call ahead of time just to make sure it is there.
5. When you see the price of a car, remember to add a few hundred to that price because the price will go up when sales tax and other fees are included.
The price listed for a car isn’t the price you are going to pay. There are lots of other fees and taxes that are added. So, try to look for cars that are lower than your budget so that it doesn’t get too expensive when those fees are added.
6. STICK TO YOUR BUDGET
I almost purchased a couple of cars that were over my budget and I am so glad I didn’t. Make sure not to get in over your head and really take the time to figure out what you can afford. I made a monthly budget to figure out how much I could spend. When making your budget, make sure you still have money to save, and money to spend on things you want to do.
7. Don’t rush
I have been looking at cars for a couple of months. Don’t rush into buying anything. Do your research and try a bunch of different cars so you know what you like. Figure out what is really important to you. So many cars didn’t end up working out for me and I gave up quite a few times and didn’t feel like looking anymore. After tons of searching with my Dad (thank you Dad you’re the bomb) I found the perfect car.
My New Car!
I ended up getting a 2015 Ford Focus and I love it! It drives great and has a lot of really cool features. I am so glad I ended up with this car because it was my favorite one. It took me a long time to get to this car, but now I am so happy and wouldn’t want anything else. I’m going to do a full “car tour” and review in an upcoming blog, because this one is already getting long!
Thank you so much for reading today’s blog. I hope my tips help! If you like this blog, please share, comment, sign up for email notifications and follow me on Instagram. I’ll be back on Sunday with a new blog! As always, thank you so much for your support!
Signed,
Ashlyn
Nice car!!!