Cars, Cars, Cars....

When a husband and wife are each used to having their own car, can they go to being a "one car" family? That's the question we've been hashing over since my husband retired a year ago, but especially the last few weeks. It's true, American's have a love affair with cars, we have become dependent on cars, and I guess our family is no exception, unfortunately.

My husband, son and I have spent a lot of time the last few weeks dealing with and talking about cars. His ’91 Accord has given our son a lot of garage bills these last 6 months, especially two very large ones this winter, he was hard pressed to be able to pay for those repairs. It was time for a newer used car for him. He and his Dad have been looking around. Then the other week when we had a hail storm, Rob’s car got pelted all over with the baseball sized hail we received. We looked at it being a blessing that the insurance company totaled his car. Of course, it wasn’t enough to buy another, and it left Rob without a car.

My husband and I decided that we could sell him our second car, the one Bob drives, a ’98 Toyota Corella, that way he would know what he was getting in a used car (track record of repairs etc.). We talked about going to one car between us and not replacing the Corella if we sold it to Rob.

I had been thinking a year ago when he retired, that we could manage with one car between the two of us, he thought we couldn’t. However, a year later, we have reversed our opinions, I have changed my mind. In that year’s time, I decided we probably couldn’t manage with one car and now he has decided that we could! Isn’t that something! I was willing to try though, because I think there are too many cars on the road, and that “justice” wise, with our global warning problems, we should try to only use one car, less gas use, less carbon in the air, etc.

About the time I was feeling good about us only being a one car family, and ready to try it, he announced that he saw a car he was interested in buying. It’s a 2003 Toyota Echo. He says it will give him even better gas mileage than his Corella, which gave him good mileage. He said we shouldn’t feel as guilty, since we are going to a smaller car for better gas mileage. (Oh, my it sure is a lot smaller!) Well, all week we talked about it, I went to the car dealer on Wed. and looked at it, and I could tell he had his heart set on it. There are a lot of smaller cars on the lots these days, with the rising gas prices. The market is up for small cars and so are the prices. I think before the rise in gas prices, we could have picked this car up for less money. I’m not looking forward to two car payments a month, but, I guess I’ll have to accept it, starting next month we will have another bill to pay, because we went to the dealer this morning and picked up the ECHO. Bob is happy. Rob is happy, and well, I’m happy that we could help Rob!