Friday, September 11, 2009

Weekend Assignment #283: Major Purchase

Karen wants to know what big purchases we may have made recently. Well, we've made two, so it's an easy one for me this week.

Weekend Assignment: #282: What was your most recent major purchase, that is, of a durable good worth $400 or more? (Yes, cars and houses count.) Was it something you researched and agonized over for weeks and months, or did you go through the whole buying process in an hour or a day?

First, about two months ago we bought a new car. Jenn's car was getting old and getting to a point where, even though it was paid for, we were spending about the same amount of money on repairs as we would a car payment. So, we decided it was time to replace hers and get something a little more reliable and save some money on repair costs.

It didn't take too long to find a car we wanted, though we did change the vehicle type after our first round of searching. We starting off looking for a crossover/SUV, but after looking at a few we decided to replace Jenn's small sedan with a mid-size sedan. It made more sense. I'm not a big fan of SUVs myself and Jenn doesn't like to drive the station wagon we have, so I don't see her enjoy driving a bigger car.

We ended up on a Toyota Camry. It was cheaper than the SUVs and has heated seats, so we're all happy.

The other big purchase just came the other day. We got a sectional couch for the living room. We are in the process of doing some changes in the way things are set up in the house and this seemed to be a good time to change the couches out. We ended up taking out the dinning room table and China cabinet and turned that area into an office. The computer is here now, we've moved in one of the love seats from the living room and now we have the new sectional in the living room. Now he have four reclining seats. How could we not be happy? We got them on sale and don't have to pay for them until next year, which is nice.

Extra Credit: Are you generally an impulse buyer, or do you prefer to take lots of time to consider your options?

I wouldn't say I'm an impulse buyer. I do check things out a little bit and think about what I want to get for a while. We did move pretty fast on the couches though.


3 comments:

Florinda said...

Oh, you're really going to like those heated seats once winter arrives in Chicago. (When is that, anyway - in about three more weeks :-)?)

Since most people don't seem to use their dining rooms much anyway, you'll probably spend more time there now that it's an office. And my husband would be very envious of those four recliners!

Mike said...

Florinda: the other car had them and they are great. The problem was that the big cars needed a ton of options in orde to get heated seats. It wasn't worth it.

Jenn said the same thing about the dining room. She had the idea for the change.

Karen Funk Blocher said...

Sounds like two good purchases, especially the car. Congrats!