I shared with you guys earlier this week how we ditched $10K in debt overnight by selling our newer SUV and purchasing, in cash, an older one. So what’d we go with?
We decided to purchase a 2004 Honda Pilot to accommodate the interior space needed for transporting furniture and sliding patio doors (hopefully soon!) and people when we have visitors in town. We found one that was mechanically well cared for by a single dad with four kids. However, with four kids and kind of a messy guy, the interior left little to be desired. Which is why we got a great deal on it.
That’s me sending a photo to my sister showing her how large the inside is (already filled with donate piles and recycling!). It’s the largest vehicle I’ve ever owner and I kinda love it.
There was trash and toys and wrappers everywhere. There are broken vents and missing light covers. There were goldfish crackers and socks and mail and broken toys and perler beads and headbands and everything you could imagine in this car. If we were looking for a nice, primary family vehicle there is no way we would have purchased this. But we weren’t. So it was perfect. All I cared about were that the seats were in decent condition – not torn at all, and they weren’t. Many of the other small things could be fixed, like the vents, or cleaned.
The guy actually lived in it every so often. He used to commute a few hours each way to work and occasionally he would blow up an air mattress and just sleep in the back. Amazing the stories that come with used things.
All that to say, we saved about $1,500-2,000K on this specific type of vehicle, based on comparables we were looking at, all because the inside was horrible. It cost us $120 to get a full detail, like pull the seats out and disinfect the entire thing, detail job. Well worth it for the initial savings.
Comes with a cassette player and all. For all those cassette’s I’ve held on to…
This bad boy has 240,000 miles on it and we fully expect to get another 50-60,000, if not more! Hopefully it’s a good vehicle to us and only needs minimal things over the next few years. Fingers crossed!
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