Two to One
It's not often that you trade cars and reduce debt, but that's exactly what Liz and I did today. We've had our Subaru payed off for a few years now, but owed about $7k on our Nissan. As I'm only working out of the house 2 days a week now we'd toyed with the idea of dropping down to a single car for a few months. During that time we've tracked how often both cars were in use at the same time and it wasn't much at all. We kinda wanted a Honda Element or some other similar SUV, but all of those would have increased our monthly expenditures. Rick and Charla got a minivan last week, which I didn't think much of until I heard how much they paid for it. They payed way less than an SUV would cost, and there is a ton of room inside. So we decided to keep our eyes open for one that fit our budget.
Liz, as usual, found a good deal within a day or two of us deciding we were open to the option. We went to look at it last night, explaining to the salesman that we wanted to trade 2 cars for it even (i.e. no car payment). His first offer was our two cars and to finance $3800. We were like "Ummm... you don't understand.... we don't want a new car. We want to modify our budget." So he "talked to his manager" and came back with a reduced price of $3200. Another trip or two to the manager and he got down to $2800 and let us know that that was about as good as it was going to get. We thanked him and let him know that it wasn't the deal we were looking for, and left. While we had been there, we had gotten a voice mail from another Toyota salesman based on some information Liz had requested from their website. He was interested in working with us.
While I was at work today, that same salesman came and picked up our Subaru to look it over, and dropped off the van for Liz to look at. They haggled and negotiated, unbeknownst to me, for a few hours. It basically consist of Liz saying "no", and him coming back with more offers. Finally, Liz IMed me to let me know what was going on. They were starting to get close to an offer we could work with, so we started asking them how much cash it would take, in addition to our two cars, to make a deal. Liz offered them $1000, and they asked to talk to me. He called me and said they'd take the cars and $2000. I told him that $1000 was going to be tricky for us to come up with, and $2000 was certainly out of the question. We did a little more discussion where he described some of the things they were going to have to fix on the Subaru, and I explained that we were patient enough to look for another deal elsewhere. He asked what it would take to get us up there tonight, and I said "Our two cars and $1000." He talked to his manager again, and came back w/ $1408.72, which we accepted. As of now, we're the proud owners of a 2000 Toyota Sienna, zero car payments, and $7k in debts taken care of.