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Even though we just paid off our credit cards in August and have started competing to pay off our mortgage, we opened a new debt account on Monday.

We’ve been shopping for a new(to us) car for a while.   Simply put, we’ve outgrown our current vehicles.

As I said last week, these are our needs:

• We have 5 people in our family.  My 13-year-old son is bordering on 6 feet tall and shows no sign of not growing.
• Every weekend, we have at least 1 extra kid, sometimes 2.
• We still have a giant(24 foot) boat that we won’t be selling until spring.
• My wife wants to lease a couple of ponies next summer, which will mean a horse trailer to haul them in.

We were looking for a GMC Acadia, which would meet our needs, but after talking to my brother–an Acadia owner–and the dealer, we decided it wouldn’t be the best fit.   It would be marginal for towing the horses and the back row of the older models isn’t as roomy as the new one I sat in.

Saturday, we went to test drive an Acadia, which is where we had the conversation with the dealership.   We ended up test-driving a Chevy Tahoe instead of the Acadia.   With the options and mileage, it bluebooks for $27531, but they were using it as an online price leader and had it priced at $25000.   Maybe I missed something, but the thing ran well, handled great, and the engine sounded good.  As a way to get people on the lot, it worked.

Our plan was to put $5000 down, and see about trading in our Dodge Caliber and Ford F150.   We brought the Caliber with us.  Its bluebook value is $9,969.  They offered us $5500, so we went home.

Sunday, we decided to sell the car and truck ourselves.  We texted the salesman and offered $24,500.  He accepted, we got a new truck that will fit our family and our needs.

With taxes, fees, and our down payment, we now have a car loan for $21564.  Our plan is to sell the Caliber for $9500 and the F150 for $6800.  That will leave $5354.  We have a beneficiary IRA that has to be cashed out relatively soon, so we’re planning to do that early in January to push the tax burden to next year, which will end the loan.

Effectively, we’re paying about $300 in interest to give us a chance to move our assets around to take advantage of an SUV meeting our needs for $3000 under blue book.   Yes, we could have waited until the assets were ready, but this truck wouldn’t have been there, so we jumped on it.