{"id":86,"date":"2010-02-04T19:31:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-05T02:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.benaimfletcher.com\/?p=86"},"modified":"2010-02-04T19:31:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-05T02:31:00","slug":"the-luna-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/beccablogs.com\/?p=86","title":{"rendered":"The Luna Story"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There seems to be some confusion and wondering amongst my friends as to why I got a new car. I&#8217;ve been getting gchat and email questions about it. I love y&#8217;all for being concerned, but it&#8217;s cool.. I know what I&#8217;m doing. <span style=\"color: red;\">\u2665<\/span><\/p>\n<p>For starters, I&#8217;m not stupid enough to buy something I can&#8217;t afford. Y&#8217;all know that. Y&#8217;all also know that money <i>had <\/i>been exceptionally tight for the 4 months Steve was unemployed and I was paying as many of our bills as I could handle and still pay for my own. Now, on the paltry salary I&#8217;m making, that was way worse than paycheck to paycheck since our rent was 90% of 1 of my 2 paychecks each month. And it&#8217;s not like he wasn&#8217;t going out every single day and trying to find something, the hiring processes were just taking <i>forever<\/i>. Since he&#8217;s been employed, and actually likes his job, money has been much better for the last few months. However, it&#8217;s not my business to post about that stuff, so y&#8217;all really didn&#8217;t know anything that was actually happening. I know, some of you are on my FB and saw the tiny tidbit&#8217;s of info I was posting there. But I don&#8217;t post like 80% of my life on FB because there are too many people on there that I just don&#8217;t care to share everything with. <\/p>\n<p>My payments on Luna are about $20 more than my Moxie payments and still under $300. I managed to talk them down well over $150 off their original &#8220;suggested&#8221; monthly payment. I was at the dealer for about 7 hours by myself haggling and very sick the whole time. After a while, they were actually impressed with how I was holding my ground and not just rolling over and taking what they offered. I&#8217;ve learned how the game works with my previous 2 cars and knew what I wanted to pay and just wasn&#8217;t accepting it. I did almost leave a few times \u2013 my dad and Steve were proud of that. LOL. When I brought the 2nd set of Moxie keys in over a week later, they knew who I was without even asking my name and asked about the car, etc.<\/p>\n<p>I did a ton of research on cars in the weeks leading up to buying her. Again, I&#8217;m not a nitwit. I had a plan, I knew what I wanted, then during my research I switched what I wanted. I was shocked, quite frankly, that the Hyundai Elantra Touring had such high ratings and amazing reviews over and over again. Plus, hello my price range! I was shocked as I had a Hyundai prior to Moxie and was so over it by the time she was 5 years old. Notice a trend there? I keep my cars for 5 years then trade them in. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>So here are some of the better things I love about Luna, in no particular order&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Bluetooth<\/li>\n<li>Sunroof<\/li>\n<li>Crossover SUV\/ wagon<\/li>\n<li>4 times the amount of storage space<\/li>\n<li>Huge back seat to hold 2-3 baby seats<\/li>\n<li>XM radio (just found that today!)<\/li>\n<li>Brand spanking new 2010 model car<\/li>\n<li>Phenomenal warranty<\/li>\n<li>Roadside assistance<\/li>\n<li>Automatic \u2013 ok, not so crazy about that, but important for when we have kids *I* think<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Financially:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>$8200 for Moxie \u2013 let that sink in for a bit \ud83d\ude00<\/li>\n<li>Graduate student discount<\/li>\n<li>Purchase\/ financing price is $3,000+ off the sticker price and on the low end of the &#8220;price paid&#8221; in all the reviews I&#8217;ve read<\/li>\n<li>Virtually the same size gas tank and mileage as Moxie \u2013 at current prices, $25 to fill it<\/li>\n<li>Full coverage insurance was $15 more\/month on a brand spanking new 2010 car<\/li>\n<li>Moxie needed roughly $1500 of work as she was 5 years old, needed new brakes, a new battery and replaced motor mounts<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There seems to be some confusion and wondering amongst my friends as to why I got a new car. I&#8217;ve been getting gchat and email questions about it. I love y&#8217;all for being concerned, but it&#8217;s cool.. I know what I&#8217;m doing. \u2665 For starters, I&#8217;m not stupid enough to buy something I can&#8217;t afford. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-luna","category-not-wedding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beccablogs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beccablogs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beccablogs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beccablogs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beccablogs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/beccablogs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beccablogs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beccablogs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beccablogs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}