Congrats to dad for finally ditching is old Ford Ranger, biting the bullet and buying a brand new car. He’s now driving a more stylish, more reliable 2004 Toyota Corolla. We’ll be checking it out this Saturday. Of course, mom’s car is still much nicer. It’s a Toyota Highlander SUV they bought brand new, around this time last year, right before my wedding. This is typical for Filipino households. The woman always has the better vehicle. They were actually thinking of getting a Toyota Tundra for dad (perhaps because he is partial to trucks) but my always pragmatic parents thought that it would be wasteful to drive a Tundra to and from Houston because all of the mileage will depreciate the value right away. Brian made a really good point when we were talking the shower the other day, though. Trucks are great for moving and dad moves around a lot. I guess he will just have to either borrow mom’s Highlander (since it is an SUV and can hold a lot more than his new Corolla) or rent a UHaul trailer.<\/p>\n
What I really find amusing about my parents is that the purchase, as usual, was totally unplanned. Matt picked up Logan one day. I guess they saw an Eddy’s Toyota (where they bought mom’s car last year) commercial ad on tv saying 0% financing on all 2003 models so they thought, we have nothing better to do, let’s go check out cars! Of course, there were no more 2003 models when the got there. How that can happen (as big an operation Eddy’s is), I know not but they ended up getting talked into buying a 2004 model with 2.9% financing. Not bad but with car dealerships, just like in Vegas, the house always wins.<\/p>\n
I’m a little surprised that mom talked dad into it. I know it was her too because she always does this sort of thing. She’ll spend hundreds of dollars (perhaps thousands) on furniture without even blinking. She is the impulsive one. Dad used to be really anal-retentive about stuff, researching every aspect and examining every angle before he will even say yes I’ll think about it. He is more laid back now and more open to mom’s whims. Maybe he has mellowed in his old age (no offense, dad) or maybe he’s just given up the fight. If you can’t beat them, join them.. Right?<\/p>\n
Kidding aside, mom tells me that this is a necessity because dad’s truck has gone to hell in a handbasket. It’s turned into a cash cow for greedy mechanics at the auto repair shop. So it was a spur-of-the-moment necessity purchase, if there is such a thing. Mom was really happy that the dealership gave them $2000 trade in value for the truck without even looking at it. I think they could have squeezed another $1000 out of the deal, considering that the dealer will probably sell it for $5000 on the lot, but hey dad has mellowed and mom has always been easy (no offense to either of you). Lord knows how many imaginary repairs they’ve paid for on that truck. Just kidding!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Congrats to dad for finally ditching is old Ford Ranger, biting the bullet and buying a brand new car. He’s now driving a more stylish, more reliable 2004 Toyota Corolla. We’ll be checking it out this Saturday. Of course, mom’s car is still much nicer. It’s a Toyota Highlander SUV they bought brand new, around […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=95"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=95"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=95"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=95"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}