What I learned about life from my first car, part 1
I bought my very first car when I was 20. I paid cash for it; $5,000 to be exact. It was a 1990 Nissan Sentra. She was red, a year old, and I named her Bessie. She wasn’t much to look at—a box on wheels really—but she was my first and I loved her.
So, how did a broke 20-year-old scrape together $5,000 to buy a car? Well, in my teens and twenties I was wee bit of an overachiever. My parents paid for my first two years of college and informed me that it was my job to pay for the last two from the savings they had forced me to pull together from the time I was 12. Always looking for an angle, I figured out I could graduate in 3 years instead of 4 if I took the maximum course load. I knew that would leave me a sweet little stash of cash if I played my cards right. So that’s what I did. Like I said, an overachiever. (Don’t worry; that trait has long passed.)
So it was May of 1991 and I had my cash. I scoured the newspaper classifieds. Yes, it was that long ago—pre-Craigs list, pre-ebay, almost even pre-Internet. Some dad was ticked that his son wanted to (horrors!) add a surfboard rack to the car, so he decided to take it away from his son and sell it. If the boy wanted a rack, he’d have to buy his own damn car.
We (yes, I had my friends with me) test drove the car. It seemed like a pretty sweet deal. So I told the guy I wanted to buy it right then. I can see his face now because I have since become old enough to look at 20-year-olds the same way. He looked like he wanted to pat me on the head and say, “Let me explain to you how the world works.” I knew nothing about transferring title or going to the DMV. I figured I just handed him a check and he gave me keys. I didn’t want to look dumb so I pretended I knew all about everything he was telling me.
The great thing I took away from the experience was how nice it is to be able to pay cash for something. You pay for it and it’s yours. It’s simple and clean, no strings attached and no interest adding up. It was a nice feeling and one I still like because it feels powerful. There’s no arguing over monthly payments or interest rates or what your trade-in is worth. You find a good product at a good price and you walk away with what you want. I figured out right then that I liked the security that having money could bring me. In the years that followed, I lost my way on that. I got into credit card debt and lived beyond my means. I managed to pull my way out of that in a few short years because I wanted to get back to that feeling of security. I’ve only financed one car since then and that monthly payment bothered me so much that I paid it off in one year instead of the three that I financed it for.
Owning that car equaled freedom to me in lots of ways and that only happened because I had the cash for it. I graduated in a recession and couldn’t find a decent job to save my soul. I would have never been able to finance a car based on my income, so saving up that money gave me the freedom I craved. Days after agreeing to buy the car, I walked away from the DMV with the title in my hand, free and clear. Now, all I had to do was learn how to drive. But that’s part 2 of this story.
