2 for 2: In at 3:00, out by 6:00 with a Prius

I just bought another Prius today. It was a bit on a whim. My wife's car was getting old and was on it's last legs. The check engine light came on today, and instead of paying yet more money to fix that car, we decided to go out and see if we could buy another prius.

So... Just like when we bought our first Prius in April, we went into to dealer at 3:00 and they just happen to have one available. 3 hours later, we drove off in our new Prius.

I'm still trying to figure out what this wait list everyone talks about is... :lol:

 

Nope. That's Lancaster County. A good hour or two from here. Bucks is just north of Philly.

We now have twins. Both silver. One package 6 and the new one is a 4. Didn't plan for the silver in either case, it's just what they had.

 

Well, seeing how my wife will be driving the new one, I expect a very significant difference in mpg. :lol:

 

Well, you know, I did fret over that for a while. First off, after having read the legislation about the tax credit, I was under the impression it was $2500, not $3150. Additionally, the car we are replacing was old and tired and was going into cascading failure mode. We just spent $1000 two months ago to fix a leaking head gasket. A couple of weeks ago, it starting having problems with the damn PassLock anti-theft system which would intermittently prevent the car from starting. The repair shop quoted us $600 to fix that, but we decided not to, but the problem was getting increasingly worse and was quite annoying. And then yesterday, the check engine light came on. I figured that with the history of the car, that was going to cost us another $400 to $500 dollars.

Then they told us they would give us $1000 trade in for the car, but they had to test drive it to make sure the engine and transmission worked. While they did that, I was praying that they didn't notice or care about the check engine light, and my wife was praying that it would actually start for them. But all went well, so we did get $1000 for it.

So... I knew I would get about $500 from this year's $2000 deduction. I'd be getting $1000 trade in for a car that might not be running a month from now and therefore might not be worth much of anything then. Lastly, I know that this year Pennsylvania has a $500 rebate, assuming they still have funding for it at this point in the year, but I wasn't positive that they would still do that next year.

Add that all up, and I figured I was leaving $500 to $1000 on the table by not waiting until January, but I wouldn't see that money until 16 months or so from now.

Plus, if I didn't buy that car, someone else would. There really is a waiting list in Pennsylania, but I just happened to be very lucky on two occasions. They only had two Prii available on the lot, this one was a cancelation, and they weren't going to stay there long. I didn't want to end up on a waiting list with a dead car.

 

Oh, and another thing that people might not be aware of is that the "American Jobs Creation Act of 2004" allows you to deduct state sales taxes for the years 2004 and 2005 if you itemize deductions. They would have needed to extend that for it to apply past 2005, and I don't know if they did that. So I know I could deduct an additional $1500 or so from my taxes this year, and may not be able to do that next year.