I haven't had as much time for blogging as I would have wished recently. Instead, I've been spending a lot of time online gathering information and ideas for getting a new (to us) car. Our New Year's Day was a little more exciting, though a little less fun, than we had hoped. We were in a car accident. We are all okay. In fact, Beckett came out with not even a bruise. I had and still have some lingering whiplash--not in my neck, but in my upper back. James has a sore shoulder. It was kind of crazy, and only about a mile from our house, on a surface street. A lady was coming around a curve... and she didn't turn. She ploughed into us. Our car was totaled. We made a visit to the ER.But I'm getting off my real subject. We're all okay. But we need a car now, and I'm even more committed to having something safe for us. We're looking at a few different options, with the help of a few of my favorite online resources... Edmunds for car reviews. I especially like the true cost to own feature, which estimates the cost of gas, depreciation, maintenance, etc. for the first five years. Kelley Blue book for checking the prices that people are asking for private sales of used cars. Carfax for getting the history of a specific vehicle and recommendations for how close that vehicle should be to the blue book price. Oh, and I almost forgot: Safercar to look up the government five star safety ratings on any given vehicle. I just wish they had a search feature where you could search by number of stars--I had to put together my own list of all the used car models that are five stars for front and side impacts. I wish they could have done it for me. (The new 2011 rating system is different, with an overall rating now, also. But even then, I don't think there is a way to search for only the five star, or five and four star vehicles.) And even after all these resources, it's still a crazy decision, with so many variables, at least for people who don't just have 20,000 to drop here and there. :)
So wish me luck!
