My Story in Lists| Cars I've Had Part IV

Part of the deal when I got my powder blue Corolla was that I was to make the final payment. Dad had leased the car and he was making the monthly payment, but at the end of year three, I would need to have several thousand dollars saved up. At that time of my life, I was horrible...horrible...at saving money. At the end of the lease term, I was no closer to the final payment then I was at the beginning.

The leasing agent had began calling me several months before the lease was up and I was ignoring the calls because I didn't know what I was going to do. I didn't think I had the credit I needed to buy a car, but somehow, someway, I did. So right after Christmas, I headed up North to visit dad in Vancouver with a car brochure in hand and I ordered me up another Corolla. I felt like a big girl. I was already in my 30's so it was about time.

This time my car was green (green!?!) and I naively got it sight unseen. Didn't even take it for a test drive. I was just so relieved at having a car, let alone another new car, that I just signed on the dotted line. For the next three years I made my payments faithfully. God was so faithful to me, providing me with a job that paid the bills and with a job that included increases so that I wasn't living so much month-to-month.

While I liked the car, it really wasn't the car I would have chosen had I known I had options. Somewhere in the middle of my lease, I fell in love with another Toyota model, known as a RAV-4. By this time, SUVs were highly popular. I liked them as much as the rest of the U.S. population, but wasn't interested in the price tag or the cost of gas. A RAV-4 offered me the look of a SUV, with the price and gas mileage closer to my Corolla.

When the lease was up, I jumped at the chance to trade in the Corolla for a RAV-4, white, if you please. Matt and I were so excited. Matt, because the back seats folded back so he could nap in the back seat if he were ever vanqueshed to the back. I loved that I was sitting up higher than most standard cars, had a little bit of a cargo area and had a car I felt like I chose instead of taking what I thought I should take.

The only thing I didn't like was that, once again, I was leasing a car which meant by the end of the term I would have to come up with a big payment or lease again. I felt trapped and really wanted to get away from having monthly payments for a while. I was happy to learn at the end of my lease with the RAV-4 that I could extend my payments for another year and pay off the car. I opted to do that and after seven years of payments, I finally owned a car outright.