Focus on spending

 

          One thing you can depend upon: My wife and I can be counted on to recognize when we must limit our spending. We are both, by nature, careful people.

          Our impending move from California to Ohio is going to be expensive and we have been working very hard to keep our spending down to a dull roar. As we are not a government organization, we can’t spend more than we have.

          Oh, by the way, we bought a car last week.

          Yep, had to do it. Amy’s VW Beetle was due for a checkup prior to our epic drive across the country next week and it turned out the thing was leaking more fluids than it was holding. We’ve been losing oil out of the thing for six years (no mechanic we took the car to could find the source of the problem), there was a coolant leak and some other stuff was happening.

We could have fixed the Beetle. I wanted to sell it in Ohio, where a California car will do better in resale because it has never been exposed to road salt. But after a night-long discussion, we decided to test the used car waters and ended up buying a used 2012 Ford Focus.

We test drove a Ford Fusion and a VW Jetta before we choose the Focus. Amy liked another VW even more than the Focus (she liked the other car because it was red) and I saw some Mustangs I liked (one was red, too), but the Focus we bought gets very good gas mileage and has a terrific amount of trunk space.

We’ve driven the Focus extensively already and we both really like the way it travels.

Most importantly, we will be very comfortable as we sit in the car during the trip to Ohio because our wallets will be so much thinner.

 

Thanks for reading.