This isn’t the love story of a kid and his first car, nor a financial story about how I have no money for a new one. I have been waiting for my car to keel over and die on me since 2012 started, why you might ask? Well it is a simple story. In Michigan they use salt on the roads in the winter that give the under body a lot of rust and it was only a matter of time before I would have to replace something. I was planning on keeping it until the repairs really were killing me to pay because I got the car from my parents after they had owned it for a while and put around 100,000 miles on it, at the end of its life it had around 200,000 miles and the insurance company gave, or is giving, me $6,000 to replace it! Someone rear ended me the other day which is why I have been thinking about this more and more recently and it is amazing how I look at the cars for sale here around the same age and many of them look brand new! I still don’t trust them and I wouldn’t want to buy one without asking if anything is wrong but they are very nice looking Automobiles. The problem isn’t quality but the price and the quantity available. In Ventura so far I have found 3 pages of Crown Victoria’s and one ford escape and 3 ford escorts, all of which I like but also know that the gas is expensive for 2 out of 3 of them and that the escape has a chance of not being to California’s standards. I wanted to put that money toward a new car so that I could use it for the rest of college and into my career for a while but it seems that all of this has a way of not working out since the insurance would be over $200 a month which is more than the car payment! The most direct route is to get a used car with half of the money and assume the other half will be gone within a few years for repairs and gas. I have no clue what car to get I look at reviews and am in a confusing maze of annoying pop-ups and crazy sales pitches. The only thing I know for sure about these cars is that half of what is said on the sellers page is made up BS and the other half is still suspicious. I wish I was in good enough shape to ride a bike 12 miles to school but I seriously doubt I’ll be in that good of shape in less than a year, much less a month. I just am not sure how to handle this car buying thing.