We got a new car! Well, new to us, anyway. We have been looking for something a little bigger than our 1998 Ford Taurus for awhile, but we hadn’t really found anything in our price range. Then I noticed this 2002 Honda Odyssey posted on Craigslist for $4,500. I called and set up an appointment to go look at the car in Canton, MI. It was definitely a well-used vehicle, but it had been well taken care off. The sellers were the original owners and even had all of their maintenance receipts/records (including every oil change they had ever done). It has a lot of miles (130,000), but much of the maintenance that you expect to need around that mileage has already been taken care of (new water pump, timing belt, brakes, tires, tie rods). After Kay and I both took it for a test ride, we took the kids to IKEA so that we could have a few minutes to chat and pray over our decision. We both felt really good about the car; in fact, we felt like it was an answer to our prayers. It helped that the seller seemed like a person that we could really trust; he was really forthcoming about the condition and history of the vehicle and he even offered to let us talk to his mechanic. (I also noticed that he kept a large bible on his office desk, and we had a good conversation about camping in Utah.) We would have preferred to take the vehicle to an independent mechanic to get an outside opinion of the condition of the vehicle, but he had several more people scheduled to see the car that day and we were pretty sure it would be sold by the end of the weekend. We decided to go ahead and offer him $4,000. He accepted and we are the proud owners of a Honda Odyssey! As soon as we got home, the kids played all over the car.

Their verdict? “Much better than our red car!” I think I have to agree.