V-V-V-Room!

I'm pretty confident that mine and Joyce's life (is that even grammatically correct?) is significantly different from the average, but since we LOVE our life, we wouldn't choose to change very much. Besides, changing the already-happened is nigh to impossible, and we feel strongly that we have always made the correct decision, factoring in the time, place, and circumstances at that point in our lives. Financially, we are comfortable in retirement with my teacher's pension plus the savings + investments we have made over the years, impacted by consciously deciding many moons ago that having one of us stay home with our children and being a single income family was worth foregoing the acquisition of stuff.

We have not regretted that decision ... not even for a second!

One of the many impacts of choosing the single income pathway has been less expendable income to treat ourselves with purchases that, from where we stand, did not jive with our frugalness. We have always driven used vehicles because we couldn't justify the almost automatic depreciation of a new vehicle once it was driven off the lot. That is not to say that we chose clunkers! Quite the opposite! We put in the work to find quality new-to-us vehicles, and were rewarded by those decisions with long car-owner stretches with very few "bumps in the road" ... pun intended. Even my dearly loved my Toyota Tacoma was a 5 year old truck when I purchased it, but it never let us down, even for a second.

In light of selling our home of 30 years for well above what we had budgeted for when planning retirement, we were giddy as kids at Christmas when we agreed that the time had come for the special treat of a new (well, nearly new) vehicle. Once again, we put in the work to find the right one for us, whittling down the list of possibilities to either a Toyota RAV4 or a Subaru Forester. After visiting dealerships to physically touch and feel each choice, we found a couple of that would scratch the itch and set ourselves to the task, eventually landing on the lot of Georgetown Toyota and meeting salesman Nick. He had a few choices for us to look at, but we settled on a ruby red 2020 RAV4 XLE AWD with 11,000 km on it. It was a recent off-lease option, and after the obligatory duck 'n dodge of car haggling, we were pleasantly surprised with GT's trade-in valuation of my beloved Tacoma, allowing us to make the final retirement transformation from sort-of cool pickup driving fogeys to full-on SUV driving old fogeys. When we picked up the RAV, we pulled out of the lot wearing massive smiles like teenagers sneaking out to park on Lover's Lane, the jitters of excitement tickling us both under the chin.

You know that we had to put in some KMs right away, because that's what one does with a new car purchase, so a trip to the nearest IKEA in Burlington was a great reward for our tremendous decision. We didn't even see the ridiculous rain we drove through as a nefarious sign of impending doom. The shopping trip was a resounding success, the RAV4 making us feel like Aladdin and Princess Jasmine on a magic carpet, and we arrived home with an improved sense of satisfaction about our decision. 

Plusses all the way around.

We're planning a trip back north today to meet Maddi for some wedding planning options up in Haliburton plus a visit with the MIL Pearl, feeling like the stars of the main float in the Macy's parade, the queen's wave and stupid grins aplenty as we show off our "cherry" (it's a deep red, remember?) to anyone interested. We'll be using the 3+ hour trip to figure out the plethora a new-to-us bells and whistles our new baby has to offer, not the least of which is Apple Car Play and the host of safety features that seem to be standard these days. 

More of the crazy change thing I was writing about in an earlier post!