Did I tell you about our van?

I think it would be nice to have a Happy New Year post here, laden with resolutions and reflections from the past year. I should write about my kids, and about how they've changed so much since this day last year. I could even write about all the fun we had last night with family as we played Apples to Apples (fun game!) and enjoyed Rich's aunt's perfect daiquiri's.   ....But, instead - I will tell you a story that is completely non-related to the tossing of an old calendar and hanging of a new one.

If you know me at all, you know that my husby and I are working on becoming debt free.  We're going to pay off all our debts, except the mortgage and start investing money for the kids' college and for our retirement.  We're following Dave Ramsey's program, thanks to his class Financial Peace University.  Let me just say real quick that Dave Ramsey is amazing. The stuff he teaches is complete common sense, but he's funny and engaging and you can't help but like the guy.

You might remember a set of posts I wrote called "When it rains" and "it pours".   Yeah, this post is right along those lines.

We're doing pretty good with our debt snowball.  We've paid off all our credit cards (there were only two, one from Home Depot because when we moved in here, we had to replace just about every floor in the house and also had to finish the basement which is now the playroom - where I make all my money... and a Visa that we used for big purchases like our dining room table and whatnot). We paid off our car - which is just an old Camry, our "family car" that is a nice, old, reliable car for frequent travelling.

We started to apply our debt snowball to our big, fancy-pants van in late September.  We bought the van for road trips and convenience, thinking it would be nice to have the van to haul kids around and still have room left over for STUFF.   The van was used when we bought it (thank God), but it was still a major huge purchase that we probably would NOT have made if we had learned from Dave Ramsey sooner.

Because of the Financial Peace University class, we agreed that we should try and pay off as much as we can on the van and then sell it for a little more than the rest of what we owe on it.  We were going to practically give it away....  and I was having a hard time with that because I love that van.  It has so many "bells & whistles" that made it so purty to own. I've never had a vehicle like that in my whole life.   But, the debt of the van was getting in our way, and we agreed that it would be so nice to be debt free, save up some money and buy a van (or some other vehicle) with cash!

We put a sign in the window and parked the van at the end of our street, which is a great location... but we had no bites.  We didn't advertise much more than that, because we still owed quite a bit and knew that it wouldn't sell for as much as we owed, so we were going to attack the debt first, then get more aggressive about selling.

Then, the economy tanked overnight.  And we knew it wouldn't sell.  We decided just to let go of the van for whatever anybody would be willing to buy for it.  We were prepared to take a small loss.... by this time, we'd paid off a good hunk of the loan and now only owed about 5K for it.  We talked with some friends who sounded very interested in buying the van, and agreed to let them take it for a weekend long "test drive" over Thanksgiving weekend.  Then, they would buy it from us for 6K. 

Again, I just have to stress that we were looking forward to being out from underneath that debt.  Plus, our friends had hinted in the past about wanting our van - but they didn't want to pay for it what we had on the "for sale" sign that we posted in the window back before the economy tanked.

The van sat in front of our house - on the street - every day for months on end.  We never drove the van.  Gas prices soared up to $4/gallon, sometimes more... and we realized how impractical the van really is.  Rich has a company vehicle. I work out of my house, and don't need a vehicle for commuting.  When we do go somewhere, we're always together anyway...  the van really never even got started, unless it was to drive it to the end of the street for it's optimal selling position and back.  Once, the van didn't even start.... it had been sitting that long with no activitiy.

Such a shame.... a beautiful "brand new" van, sitting on the street in front of our house collecting dust and rotting.

Then, a few days before thanksgiving, the van was hit.  Hit hard.  I was serving breakfast to the daycare kiddos when I heard the crash. I ran outside to see what the crashing noise was and found an upset teenager and his little sister up in arms... their full size truck resting in the trunk of our van. 

Nobody was hurt. At least, not physically.  The poor kid was really beating himself up. I invited them in, we called the cops, had a police report filed, his (dad's) truck was towed away, and that was the last time I ever saw my van.

Remember, we owed about 5K on our loan.  We were going to let it go for 6K to our friends. The poor kid that hit the van, hit it in all the right parts - because the insurance company determined that it would cost about 7K to repair. 

So, of course we opted to have the insurance company cut us a check for the repairs, and told the body shop not to fix the van.  Then, it happened that one of the body shop mechanics is interested in buying the van from us for a thousand bucks.

Everybody wins!  Well, except for the poor kid that plowed into our van. (I'd just like to point out that it was a sunny, dry day when the van was hit.... the van had been parked there for a MONTH, maybe more.  I don't know what happened, but can only imagine that he was going too fast and was maybe messing with the radio or his cell phone or something.... we all have one dumb thing we did as a kid, right? Some of us have more than one, heh...     He'll be fine. He wasn't hurt. His sister wasn't hurt. His dad was MAD, but the only damage done was to inanimate objects.)

....   So anyway, I've hesitated to share this story with many people, because we're still waiting for the final transactions to be made.  It has taken FOREVER for the insurance company to cut us our check for the damages.  It's taking even longer for the bank to send us our title!  We still need to take the title out to the body shop, where our sweet van is waiting and shakes hands with the body shop guy and collect his thousand bucks.  

But, as of right now, the van is finally paid off and so our debt snowball is now working on my student loan.  When we knock that out within a year or so, we'll be completely debt free (except for the house).  Thank you, Dave Ramsey!

But, there you have it ...that's the long story about our van!