Buying a car

Buying a car, whether a replacement or an additional one....DO NOT think new!!! Interest rates and insurance coverage will extend your budget further than you can anticipate. We have always bought a used car except on one occasion (and that was a small wagon, we had three kids at the time - no SUV's then.) Now with all kids out of the house, we use a small car. When we have purchased the last four or five cars, we started with "keeping our eyes out" especially when we needed room for kids but we still had several prerequisites which meant we could not be in a hurray to get one. In buying a car we looked for it to be previously owned by one owner,  owned by non-smokers, having never been in an accident, preferably owned by an adult, little mileage and relatively "young" and in good condition needing no work. Things like this take a while....oh, and not through a dealer....have had bad experiences with that plus the price definitely gets inflated. So, purchases have been made a lot through estate sales, older folks down-sizing or younger ones up-sizing. We were able to get two or three year older cars for next to nothing sometimes or/and cars with practically no miles on them. Thanks to my husband, these practices have served us well for over thirty years. So a word to the wise, when buying a car, new is not the only option nor the wisest move especially for the budget. Try to pre-anticipate, use wisdom and slow down...the care you take to finally make that purchase could possibly be with you for many years, so take time to make a solid and wise choice.