Part of our year of growing up is to get a more family-friendly vehicle. The truck has served us well. It will be hard to switch to something else, something more child seat friendly, but it has to happen. (Just like the band-aid ripping off when Craigslist took our kayaks recently.)
Now it's time for the truck. However, the truck doesn't seem to know this; like the Energizer bunny it just keeps going and going and going. Sounds great, right? Hmm... here lies our dilemma and options:
1. Our truck's frame is supposedly prone to rusting out, and if that happens Toyota will buy it back at 150% of the excellent value *cha ching*.
2. We lived in Oregon sans salted roads for too long, thus this has not happened yet. It's running great and looking great, so who knows when this will happen?
3. The truck's not really built for a car seat (although it does fit).
4. With the whole house-building and baby-coming stuff (not to mention outstanding student loan), we don't want an additional car loan.
5. The truck is worth way less as a trade in (we already tried to trade it in at a dealership).
6. We don't really need two cars, but should we hang onto it until it rusts out or our kid needs it for college (buying a cheaper family vehicle in the meantime, as well as paying the extra insurance to have two cars)? Or should we see if we can sell it on our own so we can afford a nice family vehicle now? And what should that nice family vehicle be? (Below is one option- if we were going by coolest ad...)
Back to the truck- we've posted it for sale (Craigslist: Cape Cod), and I guess we'll see what happens. The emotional attachment is hard though. It's a decade of our life, and that decade's lifestyle that we're parting with here. Someone called about it the other day and I was tempted to tell them it was not for sale anymore; that that part of my life could not be bought- but we have to move on to our new lifestyle now, I suppose.
(Too bad it's not the seventies or something- then the truck would be a great family car. You could just throw the kid, the dog, and anything else right in the back there!)
-J & A
