so, it's Thursday; here that means new car day!

Yup. Another new car. The lease was up on Haley, the Mazda 6, in September and so we had started looking around. We needed something with a smaller payment. That means less car. Or does it? Since we've been leasing with Borgman Ford/Mazda (I'll give 'em a free plug, their service dept at Mazda is OUTSTANDING!) they can give us several buy-out/turn-in/re-lease options.

I will be driving a new 2011 Ford Fusion. The payments will be cheaper (the insurance will not *shaking my fist at Michigan Insurance rates*) and while it doesn't have heated leather seats, it has the moon roof package. And while I don't need the moon roof, I have missed it (Lucy, the Protege and the CX7 both had moon roofs). It has a better stereo, it is also more comfortable albeit still loud. But I said to Bill, for the distance I drive I am willing to sacrifice road noise for comfort. Haley has been very uncomfortable. I will miss heated seats for sure, but Bill's car, Grandma Ruby, still has them. I'll just go hop in his car when I feel the need to have my butt warmed.

We have decided leasing is the way to go for us. While we care for our cars (extensively, we're both OCD about keeping them clean) somehow when we purchase one, they almost always start to fail. As Bill has blogged about Grandma Ruby giving us some problems, we feel it is financially smarter for us to lease. Bill likes to get a new car every few years. Do you know how expensive it is to buy one every three years? Yeah. It's a lot. With a lease, you get the warranty, the car, a payment similar to that when you're buying the car and in our case an extra month payment as the money down.

The alternate scenario is that we buy a car. We have to make a bigger down payment to keep the monthly payments low. We make the payments on the car and as the car ages (even though we have taken good care of it) it starts to have problems; transmission troubles, a/c fan breaks, suspension breaks, something goes wrong and it starts to cost us more money. We still have two more years before it's paid off and we've put more money into it than it will be worth. Am I preaching to the choir? People seem to think we're bougie when we say we're leasing. I'm sorry, it's more practical for us. We don't have to pay to put new tires on the car and we turn it back in before it starts to have any major breakdowns.

Maybe this should go in the blah blah blog because I feel like Bill could add some input. At any rate, it's new car day. I have to think of a good name. She's steel blue (which Bill doesn't care for), Haley was easy to name because her color is Comet Gray. Hello? Haley's Comet. Done. Steel Blue... Suggestions?