Due to her husband’s good sense, we paid it off at that point, but continued to drive it up until September 2008 when we moved and decided to give it away. Then promptly wished we had not when we realized we needed two cars in hte new area. So we spent $5000 on a 2001 Pontiac grand Am after we got here. (And I loved my Saturn MUCH better. Grumble)

But this woman, if she was concerned at being on the side of the road (I had no boyfriend for much of that time either), would have put $100 into a yearly AAA membership instead of $10000 into a new car. In the 9 years I owned my Saturn, I NEVER felt unsafe in it. Even driving to Idaho, Montana, etc.

I do understand the “not wanting to be stranded on the side of the road” thing. My Sunbird actually *did* that to me when it finally died on me (failed at an intersection, no less). It was not a fun experience, I’ll admit. Still, just randomly shelling out money won’t necessarily buy you reliability. The fact that she refuses to even consider buying for less than $10,000, even after you did your homework and showed her the Consumer Reports on the Civic, to me seems like a red flag.

My 99 neon is an awesome car– fuel pump recently went out and I sold it to a guy who could fix it himself, I expect his daughter will have at least the 7 years I got out of it to look forward to.

“Work utility vehicles”– minivans– are another surprisingly good deal; the ’01 dodge caravan I’ve got ATM gets car-level mileage and “sets” like a pickup, as well as being big enough to fit stuff and family.

If I was going to buy a fairly new car, I’d drop in to Les Schwab and ask them what cars they don’t see very often, as a supplement for the consumer reports.

Gotta agree with the “buy recent used vehicles” advice– best vehicle my folks ever got was a huge extended bed, 4-door red ford that had been returned after the guy found out it wouldn’t fit under his tree. (tiny scratch on the top of the cab– some seven foot in the air, so meh.)

“And check out how many black circles are next to the Hyundai’s”

I’m on #3 and the only one I had problems with was due to a bum alternator. It burned out a few other electrical devices before they found it was causing the other problems… and because of the long warranty, I didn’t pay for any of it….

The current one is an 06, no problems.

The original article, however, was about a person who made decisions that could easily have tanked even under excellent circumstances. He made bad decisions and resented his fate when the world did not oblige him by being perfect, or bestowing unnatural good luck on him to bail him out. That is quite different.

If there was smugness here, I think it derives more from the author’s position as a financial writer for the world’s most prestigious newspaper, dispensing advice to we poor unwashed. It is as if the writer of the marriage advice column had a messy divorce, and it came out that the marriage advisor behaved in ways that a common citizen recognised as obviously divorceogenic.

(Now watch me get hammered by the others on here for admitting I bought it new.)