In November of last year, we sold my car of 10 years to a young college student. That left us with one car, Matt's Taurus, that was in decent shape. When we moved here, we purchased another car, a Buick, that is used but in excellent condition. Not long after that, the Taurus began to give us trouble. We found out that it was a transmission problem but because of how old the car was (13 years) and the other problems it has including no air conditioner, we decided to just save for another car and wait for the Taurus to kick the bucket.
On Tuesday of this past week, Matt was leaving for work at 2:00pm because he had the evening shift. He texted me at work and said the car wouldn't start. I ran home to meet him and take him to work and we began discussing a new to us car. Matt had Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday off so he decided he would car shop then.
We have a local used car dealership in town. The owner goes to church with us. He sold us the Buick as well as cars to many people we know here. He's very reputable and has some great used cars. We had seen a white Chevy S-10 on the lot as we drove by several times and it was very appealing to us. Matt's never had a truck but we knew it would be good for hauling things in the future.
Matt went by to see the truck and told the guy our budget. The truck was in great condition, a 2002 model but with only 74,000 miles on it. It was close to our price range which was great but not quite there.
Side note: We financed the Buick when we bought it in December but we put a large amount as a downpayment and paid double payments each month and paid the whole car off with our tax refund. It worked well for us but we really wanted to pay cash for this next car.
The dealer told Matt he would take $1000 off of the sticker price and he would give us $500 for the Taurus (we were shocked because I'm pretty sure it's quite possibly not worth that). That brought us really close to our budget but not quite there. We were stuck in that moment. The dealer offered to let us repay the extra to him without getting a loan which was generous but we didn't want to be indebted to anyone.
We sought wise counsel who confirmed what we already knew to be true. The Lord was really speaking to me especially that we just needed to wait. Wait for my next check (which is every Friday) and wait for Matt's check (which was this Friday), examine our commitments for bills, giving etc and go from there.
On Thursday night, once we knew what our check totals would be and we had tithed, paid bills, saved, etc, we discovered we had enough money for the total of the truck without stressing our budget. We were elated!!
On Friday, Matt drove to the dealership, traded in the Taurus, wrote a check for the total amount of the truck and drove that baby home!
He is so excited and so am I. Here it is!
We are so glad that the Lord saw fit to bless us in this way. We are thankful that he has been teaching us how to manage our money best, save well and be good stewards of what he has given us. It only because of his grace that we were able to do this!
Til then-
Did YOU Hear about the Morgans?
P.S. This was longer than I expected so I'll share the other stories in another post.
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