Tuesday, August 29, 2006

I'm ready for the challenge!

I'm going to be brutally honest.

Yes, we were not thinking when we leased our Tahoe. All that went through our minds at the time was "this is an awesome car with every imaginable feature on it, let's buy it today!"

We never looked at what the future might hold for us... like 2 children and one income! To put it mildly we have struggled the last several years and are now looking forward to making the right financial decision for our family next spring.

Here is where the challenge comes in. We started checking out the terms of our lease when it expires and realized that if we kept driving the Tahoe we would be paying LOTS of money in overmileage fees. The way it stands right now, we can only drive 300 miles per month until the end of our lease in July. So, with a little help from my parents (they are allowing us to drive one their vehicles that also gets much better gas mileage) Brian is now driving the Tahoe to work everyday. Even if Brian drove everyday to work, it will still be necessary for me to take him to work 1 or 2 days a week so we don't go over the mileage. I have never been one to shy away from a challenge and this no different.

So far, we have come under the 300 miles for the month of August. Woohoo!!! Bring on September!

Another term of the lease is that all 4 tires have to be identical. I didn't think this would be any big deal until I went out and looked and low and behold we have 1 tire that is different from the other three. I was not looking forward to the cost associated with purchasing another tire. The Lord works in mysterious ways and this tire is no exception.

Brian came home from work one night last week with a flat tire. He came out of school and found there was a screw in his tire and it was flat. He happened to be parked next door to a Discount Tire but as luck would have it they were closed. The next day after finding out that this tire was covered by road hazard, Brian went and got another tire for the Tahoe. After we put it on, we realized we had not checked to see if it was the same as the rest of the tires. After checking we found that it did indeed match the others and this could have only been a "God-thing".

To God we give the glory!

1 comment:

Jason Rice said...

Wow! Glad the tire issue worked out!

About the lease, Heather and I vowed to never lease about 4 years ago when I got out of that Audi lease.

Now, the newest vow is to have at least one car in the garage that gets at least 25 mpg. So, I traded in my truck this past June for a lil Focus hatchback. I'm happy with it so far. It was only 2 years old with 14K miles and under warranty for $11K. Now if we can only get Heather's gas guzzling Expedition paid off in a couple more years we'll be good.