Okay so I am a bit impulsive. I have owned 6 cars in my life:

1. New- 1977 Datsun B210, bought at age 19, full price off the lot. I still remember I paid with tax and license $4211 and change. That little car was great, held 2 car seats and was sold to my dad when I bought car #2. He drove it until he couldn't drive anymore and the floor was rusted with a hole where you could see the road!!

2. New-1986 Toyota Tercel 4-wheel drive wagon, can't remember what I paid for it...1 year later found out I was pregnant unexpectedly. Sold to my in-laws when the 3 girls were too squished which led to my first used car purchase...

3. Used-Bonneville bought in 1992. Drove especially well highway 299 when my father was transferred to Redding for open heart surgery. Made several trips back and forth, 3 days home, 4 days in Redding as my father had a very difficult recovery and was in the hospital for over a month. We actually purchased the car in Redding and anyone who knows highway 299 in California, it is an extremely windy road over the mountains to the coast. MD threw up in the car all over the drivers seat on the drive home (true story). Haha. Purchased because I did not want to be a "soccer mom" driving around in a van. Less than 18 months later, the girls were fighting constantly in the back seat. Also the back window leaked, filling the trunk with water. Living in Humboldt and having a garage I could not park in was a very bad combination. This led to a purchase that I at first regretted and resisted, but turned out to be a great car.

4. New 1994 Plymouth Voyager, traded in Bonneville. Cannot remember the price, but payments were $300 a month for 5 years. DH really pushed me into buying the car and I was very resentful. As it turned out this car lasted us for over 180,000 miles on the original transmission. We gave the van to my husband's brother about a year ago. We kept it even though I had bought 5th car as a "dog ride". We would take the dogs and whoever to the beach and not worry about keeping it clean. This car turned out to the the one I drove all over being guess what...."a soccer mom". Daughter #3 played competitive soccer and every other sport all through school, high school and on traveling teams. Actually DH did most of the driving, missing only one tournament. DH also drove girls to other sports events since YD ended up going to private school and parents were required to bus kids.

5. Used-1999 Toyota Camry, 77,000 miles, paid $8000 to a customer of DH's at our car wash. Purchased in 2004 and kept in the garage for a while while still driving van. It was just so well taken care of and I was afraid Van would die, but it didn't, so I had two cars.

6. On Labor Day while looking for son-in-law a beater, came across a 2006 Toyota Camry with less than 27,000 miles on it at the Toyota dealership in Temecula. It was reduced for the Labor Day sale from $15,995 to $14,995. I offered $13,000. Manager comes out with invoice and pointed out the price was only $700 over invoice at that point. Okay I said, then how about $500 over invoice. He went back to his office, came out and said okay. So I wrote a check and paid for it.

I was not really looking for a car, but I felt like it was one of those deals we would be kicking ourselves about. I paid about $2000 under KBB.

So i handed 1999 Camry keys over to the kids and told them they had custody for 6 months. After that, my middle daughter gets it.

I hate to even go into the story of why I did this, because I'm sure I will get lots of negative feedback. But we all have different values and what the heck, I can take it.

You see my son-in-law originally had orders to move to Hawaii. The kids traded in both their cars and bought a new Juke because of the price of gas in Hawaii and they would only need one car living on base. So in paying for my granddaughter's preschool, they were going to have to buy a second car. Their cash budget was pretty low and so when we went out looking it was hard to find a decent car in their price range.

My plan is to keep the car for at least 10 years. It drives very comfortably, much more so than the 1999 model. I knew I was going to be zipping down to see the kids every few months and was concerned about how long the 1999 would last, so this was just too good a deal to pass up.

Hey at least I paid cash!