Josh and I have been talking about getting me a new car for about a year now, and I didn't want to commit to anything that big, so I always told him no. I was reviewing our credit earlier this year and noticed that we have awesome credit, but it won't go any higher until we actually are paying on something; other than the one credit card that we have from Amex that we use to get a certain percent of cash back from our spendings, that we pay off completely every month. I asked my bank how to increase our credit score even higher and they basically told me it will stay the same until we make a big purchase, such as a house or car, that we make monthly payments on. We plan on buying a house in the next couple years after we are out of school, so we decided we need to get a new car now so we can have an even better credit standing by the time we buy a house.
One morning I woke up and was like... I want to go car shopping! I didn't tell Josh cause he would want me to wait to go with him, and the only days he could go were weekends, which I work. So I figured I'd secretly go without him and narrow it down to a few that I loved and then have him go with me to make the final decision. Josh had always told me he could see me in a white Mazda, but they got not so good gas mileage, and that was the one thing I wanted. Mazda just came out with a new engine that gets AMAZING gas mileage, so I figured I would go try one out. I took a test drive and LOVED everything about it. But just to be safe I went and drove a couple other cars that were picked the top best cars of 2011 in some car magazine my dad had.
I ended up hating everything else. I told Josh that night that I wanted the Mazda, took him to test drive it with me, and we both loved it. I put my Civic up on KSL and within 10 minutes had about 10+ phone calls about it. I sold it for the asking price, which was more than the KBB value, in 3 hours. SCORE! So that gave us a nice down payment, that we added a lot more too, so we were able to get a good rate for our loan. We ended up getting a 1.9% rate on a 60 month loan... which is amazing. Our plan is to pay it off in two years, instead of five, so we aren't paying on a house and a car. So far we are on target to pay it off by April 2014!
I love my Mazda. I get power locks and windows! (I know this isn't cool but I had to manually do everything in my old civic) I have bluetooth and can use my phone over the speakers for calls and music so I am completely hands free. I just push the phone button on my steering wheel and say "Call Hubby" and it calls him :) It said it would get about 33 MPG city and 40 hwy... but I have been getting an average of 37mpg driving to work and school which is mostly all stop and go and when we go on trips to Idaho, St George, and Wyoming I have gotten as high as 43mpg for the whole trip. Wahoo!!!!
