I have been very lucky in the past that with my job came a company car. My eldest daughter has gotten into the habit that every few months Mummy gets a new car, and she seems to expect a new car all the time. I can understand her point of view, in the past 3 years I have had 8 brand new cars, all with a registration registered that year. None of which I have owned, all company cars.
In May 2014 all that changed when I was made redundant, and with the redundancy money I bought a car. Having been spoilt with top end luxury cars for several years, it was a real shock to discover just how much a car actually cost. I appreciate that makes me sound very snotty, but when you don't look into these things you just take it for granted. It was something I had never had to think about before.
Suddenly I was exploring new cars, second hand cars, dealers cars and researching every site I could to find a car which meet my needs. I finally found one within my budget and absolutely loved it. I had no plans to change my car, that is until we discovered Thing3 would be joining us.
Having 3 children under the age of 5 means I have to have a car big enough to accommodate 3 car seats and of course 2 adults. A standard 5 seat car is simply not big enough, as the middle seat in the back is really a half seat, and so I found myself researching 7 seat cars. In addition to researching cars, I also needed to find out the value of my existing car, sell it and if there is a difference look into finance.
Rather than visiting lots of different places for my research, I found it much easier and much less time consuming to visit just one site, Stoneacre. Here I found a great selection of cars, I could value my old car and trade it in and of course apply for many different finance options if needed. I had never really explored finance before and actually found it really interesting at how you can improve your credit rating in order to get a better finance deal
We eventually found a car which met all of our needs, and managed to fit three car seats in the back. After finding our new car, the purchasing process was really straight forward. The old car was traded in for an amount we were happy with [and had in mind], finance went through really easy and quickly and I picked up the car fully valeted.
I do still have days were I miss my old car but the girls have so much more room in our new car and it meets the needs of our growing family. All that is missing is a car seat for Thing 3 and of course Thing 3!
This is a collaborative post
