Our Newest Little Addition...A New Van!

Over Spring Break my husband and I bought a new van. We traded in my old car for a new to us mini-van. It's a 2011 Dodge Caravan and we love it. Love It!

I'm loving all the upgraded features like the awesome touch screen computer, back-up camera and DVD player!

You can even download pictures and music files directly into the van! No more scratched CDs!!! Unless of course, you want them. It's got a CD player too.

Rooster trying to shove a CD into the air vent.
No wonder our CDs are all scratched!

It's got lots and lots of room. I think I'm going to love my stow-n-go storage compartments under the floor. They seem perfect shoving junk into when you need to clean out the van quickly before company gets in.

I even love the weird key fob that has buttons to control all the doors...and of course no key...weird. *Special shout out to my husband for the "key fob art". I simply asked for a picture of my keys, and he brings me this. Thanks for helping, honey!

I'm loving all the bells and whistles on our van, but can I tell you my absolute favorite part?

We paid for it in cash.

We've known for a long time that we needed a bigger vehicle. We also knew that we wanted to avoid borrowing money if at all possible. We made a commitment when we got married to be debt free and so far (other than our mortgage) we have managed to save for all of the things we want. But saving for this van was by far our greatest accomplishment.

And it wasn't even that hard! Really! Okay, the tightening of the monthly budget was tricky, but the actual saving part was easy. 

Each month I would go to the bank and deposit our "car payment" into a savings account. We kept the money in an account that wasn't linked to our checking account or our emergency savings. Not having that account on my online banking profile meant that I couldn't transfer money out of it anytime I wanted to. Now, of course if something major had happened and we had to have that money I could always get it, but tapping into it for an online shopping spree or a last minute mini-vacation wasn't an option.

And then we waited. Waiting is the uncomfortable part. For the past 18 months I've been riding around with my knees squeezed up against the dashboard because the baby's car seat only fit in the back of my little Mazda if my seat was pushed all the way forward. I can't tell you how many times my legs would go to sleep on long car rides and there was nothing I could do about it.

But as uncomfortable as it was for us in that little car, I am so glad we waited! Yes, we could have gotten a bigger vehicle a lot sooner had we borrowed money, but we would have paid a lot more. I love knowing that we own our van free and clear! It's ours and we worked hard for it (I'm super proud if you can't tell!).

So what's next for our family? Great question! We've had a lot of big financial changes in the last month. Between buying a new van, paying off hospital bills, and me quitting my part-time job at our church, our family is going into saving mode big time. I'm hoping to blog about some of my money saving adventures as we start over fresh with a $0 balance in our savings account. Should be fun!