Our Car History
Purchasing the wrong automobiles can be a way to significantly delay wealth accumulation. Some general rules about buying cars include:
Be careful about buying brand new cars because of the instant depreciation that happens as you drive off the lot.
Only buy cars you can purchase with cash - don’t go into debt to buy a car.
Don’t lease a car.
Drive your cars into the ground.
Although Lisa and I have could have done better in the past since we generally purchased new cars and even leased one vehicle, we have not had to finance our car purchases and we always drive our cars for a very long time.
I purchased my first car at the age of 16, paying $2500 from my savings account for a 1984 Ford Mustang that only cost that much because it had been in a car accident. This was a great purchase and I drove it for 3 years until a few months before I left on my mission. At that time, my Dad traded my Mustang in for a newer Toyota Camry that became my sister Nikole’s car while I was in Michigan. Because of that, I didn’t have a car when I returned home from my mission. I ended up purchasing a new Plymouth Neon for $11,000 in October 1994. I drove that car for 13 years all through college, medical school, and residency - finally selling it for $800 when we left Washington State to move to Georgia. Driving this car for so long really helped our financial situation during these formative years of little income during my schooling and medical training.
In Georgia, I leased a Honda Accord for $300 per month. This was a 3 year lease that was perfect for our time in Georgia. When we moved to Germany in 2010, I purchased a brand new 2011 Audi A4 for $36,000. This was my Germany souvenir. I drove this car for 8 years, finally passing it on to Emily after I purchased my first electric vehicle.
I had been considering the purchase of a Tesla for many years and I even put $1,000 down to get on the waiting list for a Tesla 3 when those were released. When my name came up to order and design my Tesla 3, I decided I did not want to spend over $60,000 on a car. But by that time, I had already been convinced that an electric vehicle would be a good idea. So I looked at other options including the Chevy Volt, Chevy Bolt and the Nissan Leaf. Other than the price, my concerns with the Tesla were the inability to convert to a gas vehicle if electricity was not available. I did not relish the idea of having to stop to charge my car for an hour if driving to Utah or any other far destination. But some of the other electric and hybrid vehicles I looked at had such a small electric range that they didn’t make much sense given my long daily commute. When I finally came across the Honda Clarity, I realized this car might be the perfect fit for my needs. The Honda Clarity has an electric range of 49 miles, which is just about exactly what my daily commute requires. I typically have a few miles of gas engine driving every day, increased somewhat in colder temperatures when the electric range decreases by 5 to 10 miles. The Honda Clarity is also big enough to fit 3 bigger children or adults in the backseat, and perhaps most importantly, it also fits my golf clubs comfortably in the trunk. One other thing that pushed me into purchasing the Honda Clarity was the fact that we needed to trade in Lisa’s Honda Odyssey, so making that trade at the Honda dealership was the easiest process we could have gone through. At the time of purchase, the $7,500 in Federal Rebates and the $5,000 in Colorado State Rebates were still in effect, which drove down the purchase price of this vehicle by $12,500. And it was really the large rebates that convinced me that purchasing a new electric vehicle was the right decision for us in 2018.
Going back to our family car history, we didn’t purchase a second family car until after Katie was born. For the first 5 years of our marriage, Lisa and I shared the Plymouth Neon. During some of our time at BYU, I had a work truck from my Dad’s roofing company that I drove. And during the first two years of medical school, I joined a car pool with 4 other students from my class. We each drove 1 day a week so our wife had the car for the 4 days we were not driving. When I started my 3rd year of school, however, I needed to drive myself every day since I was rotating through different specialties at different hospitals. So in 2000, we purchased a Dodge Intrepid. This fit us well until Emily was born. At that time, we decided it was time to move into the minivan world. I was checking out minivans for a while, but wanted to wait until the end of the year to get the most discounts possible. Emily was born on December 28 in 2002. On December 31, we were at the car dealership getting the last day of the year discount. We traded in our Dodge Intrepid and purchased a red Chevy Venture. We drove this for just over 7 years all through our time in Washington and Georgia. As we prepared to move to Germany, we decided taking an old van to travel all around Europe was not the best idea. We purchased a Honda Odyssey and drove it for a month before shipping it to Germany. We ended up driving the Odyssey for over 8 years with 3 years in Germany and 5 years in Colorado.
Trading in Lisa’s Honda Odyssey for my new Honda in 2018, meant that we needed to purchase a new van for Lisa. We would have continued to drive our 2010 Honda Odyssey for longer, but there were a bunch of things that all broke down at the same time. So instead of fixing the air conditioning, fixing a crack in the windshield, purchasing new tires, replacing the brake pads, getting an oil change, and registering the van for another year, we decided it was time to trade it in. I would consider purchasing an SUV, but Lisa just loves driving a minivan and since it is her car, she gets to make that decision. We looked at the Honda Odyssey and Toyota Sienna and a few other vans. Then we found the Chrysler Pacifica. This is the only electric vehicle available that seats 7. The electric capacity is not as good as my Honda, only 33 miles, but this is often enough for Lisa’s daily errands. The hybrid component is also great for longer drives and it has served us well for the past year. The price ended up being $49,000, but the $12,500 in Federal and State rebates were also applied to this purchase making it much more reasonable, especially compared to new and 1-2 year old Honda and Toyota minivans. And significantly more affordable compared to new and used SUVs.
So now we have 2 electric vehicles charging in the garage every night. We also still own the Audi, which Emily drives. We also purchased a Mazda 3 in 2014 when Ryan got his drivers license. My idea behind this purchase was to get a reliable car that all the kids could drive. Ryan and Katie drove it during High School and then we let Ryan and Katie take this car with them to BYU in 2018. It will probably be the kids BYU car for the foreseeable future.