We are vehicle shopping

I've posted before about our van having over 200,000 miles. At the time of that post, we thought we would keep the van for awhile. Mechanically it is in good shape, but has lots of little issues, like the sliding door can't be opened too far or it gets stuck. These little issues, wouldn't be a problem if it was just me and I was going back and forth to work, but hauling around four kids? The "issues" get pretty annoying. But, at the time of that post, there was no money for anything different. We do not want to take on more debt.

Well things have changed a bit. No, we still don't have the money lying around, but I have a plan. With Tim's new job came a company car. So, now we have the Subaru, whose book value is about $5500, sitting in the drive hardly ever being used. Can you guess where I am going with this?

It is not big enough for the family, and we still would like to have a second car. Since we drive older cars, it is nice (though not essential) to have a backup. Tim isn't to use his company car for personal use and there are a few times we do need (high priority want, I admit it!) two cars. Sunday morning is an example. Tim plays on the worship team, and leaves about an hour before us. Yes, we could all leave earlier, but getting four kids ready and having them at church for an hour with nothing to do . . . well that is not too appealing to me.

So my plan? Sell the Subaru. We also should be getting a nice tax return and we have some money in savings. Put it all together and we should be able to get a decent used car for the family.

It will be a few months before we are ready to buy, but we are starting to look around now. The first decision what kind of vehicle do we want? Should we look for a salvage title again? We are a family of six, so that right there cuts the choices. Another minivan would work, but because of where we live, a van with AWD would be nice.

We have thought about SUV's. We are concerned about space in a midsized SUV. There are enough seats, but what about the groceries or luggage? We thought for trips we could use a roof rack. Another concern I have is whether the kids would be comfortable in that size vehicle when they are a few years older and are teens and preteens.

Larger SUVs would have plenty of space, but the gas bill, yikes! We have been looking at some diesel vehicles that could then be converted to use vegetable oil. I find this extremely interesting, but we are still checking into it.

Another option we are considering, a friend has minivan whose transmission went out. It is the same model as ours, but a few years newer. Other than the transmission, everything else works fine. They got an estimate of about $1000 to fix it. They opted to purchase a smaller vehicle with better gas mileage, instead of fixing the van. If we could purchase the van for about $500 and then get it fixed, that would make for a very reasonable next vehicle. With the money left from the tax return and selling the Subaru, we could pay off debt or save for the house we want to build.

Oh, the choices and decisions to make when you are trying to be frugal! I would love to hear about the vehicles you drive, especially if you have a family of similar size!