So some friends and coworkers got me listening to Dave Ramsey a couple years ago. He is a finance guy with a radio show. One of the things that he advocates is to buy all your cars with cash and not have any car payments. That sounded like a good idea so we sold our nice 2003 honda civic and bought a 1996 subaru outback with cash. (Mr. Toad)
We also needed a second car so I ended up finding a 1989 Honda civic with 190,000 miles. (Luigi)
We've had a few repairs but for the most part it has worked pretty well for us . . . until a few weeks ago.

The subaru had been acting up for a couple weeks and we took it to the dealership to have them look at the alternator. They didn't find any thing wrong with it so I decided to take it up the canyon so I could go skiing. Well on the way down I hit a horrible traffic jam and the car started to act up again. The car died just as I got to the bottom of the canyon and I managed to coast into a parting lot. Well long story short we had to replace the alternator that we had just put in. Well we had just got the subaru out of the shop when Brooke was driving our civic on the freeway and the timing belt broke which meant that the engine was toast. She was able to coast over to the shoulder and we had to tow it home. So with the civic dead, me working full time and brooke going to school we needed another car and quick. The problem was that we did not have the room in our budget for a car payment because we haven't had one for so long. We ended up having to get a loan from Brooke's parents to cover us until we got our tax return. We ended up buying a 1996 Honda Accord. We still don't have a name for it but it's been a pretty good car so far. Well the crisis is over but is nothing like having one car die, another in the shop and having to look for a new car. The worst part is we had to use our vacation money so we were not able to go with Brooke's family to Disneyland at the end of this month. I suppose there are some benefits to car payments like newer cars that don't break down.