I’ve got a car!
So I finally did it. After years of not having a car, after months of public transportation, and after a week of having accepted a job offer and wondering how I’d get there, I finally got a car.
I was basically down to an Altima or a Charger (since my brother pointed out it’s basically a chrysler 300 only less “old-manny” and cheaper). So I set out this afternoon with the intention of test driving both.
Well, I got to the nissan dealership, started my altima test drive, and I was totally digging it. I fit, I was extremely comfortable, I thought the acceleration was good, the breaking was ok, and the handling felt pretty good. And with the fuel economy difference, I decided that I didn’t really need to check out the charger, ’cause the nearest dealership didn’t have the one I was interested in in stock anyway. We worked on the feature set, and I’m now the owner of a shiny new 2008 Altima 2.5 S with the SL package, in silver with charcoal-colored leather interior.
When my roommates checked it out, we took it for a drive down to Mclean and Tyson’s Corner, just to see how my commute would be. Turns out, pretty tolerable … it’s really not a bad run at all. And even more tolerable now that I’ve found a couple of solid XM stations that look like they’ll be good commute-listening.
I’m a bit concerned that I’ve just committed to about $600/mo in payments for the car and insurance, though. The job I took is about a grand a month raise over my last job, which means about $650-$700/mo more take-home after taxes, meaning I’ll only be about $100/mo better off. But that doesn’t take into account the $200/mo I spent on metro fare. I figure I’m going to be spending about $100-$150 a month on gas, which means the net effect of the new job is a takehome gain of about $150-$200.
That’ll be good times. But not great, I’ll definitely have to keep the spending in check for a while…
Looks like tomorrow’s going to be rainy, but maybe I’ll take some pics of the new car anyway…