We live in a very small town, 5 minute drive to get anywhere, and yet we have two cars. One of them is a Mercury Grand Marquis, 97, in super excellent shape (well maintained by an elderly driver, my grandma). The other is a 98 Ford Explorer which is in horrible shape (currently without a windshield thanks to a hurricane, but hey it's Mexico, so we get away with using it locally until we can afford to replace it). I would obviously like to sell the Explorer and just use the Mercury, BUT, we are farmers and construction people so we actually need a truck. Plus a lot of roads around here are really rustic. So my dilemma is this:
The blue book value for the Mercury is only about $2500 but it's actually worth about $5000 because it would take that much to buy an equivalently well-maintained car, with an equivalent long-life ahead of it. Being Baja Mexico, I can probably get close to $5000 anyway. It just hurts to sell something that is in such good shape, and I'm afraid we wont be able to find such a reliable car for a price we can afford.
However, I really dont think we need two cars, and we really need a reliable work truck (which the explorer is not).
So my idea is this: sell the Mercury, use the funds to buy myself a road bike and a bike trailer and fix the windshield of the Explorer and sell it. Then use whatever's left to buy a quality old truck. There's actually a 93 Nissan pickup in unbelievable shape (as well maintained as the Merc) and he's asking just over 5 for it.
This is a good idea, right?
Edited to Add:
The roads: to get to town and back is a quick drive on nicely paved roads. The problem with the Mercury is driving onto the farm or driving to a potential construction job site where the roads can often have foot-deep ruts. This area is one of the few where I think an SUV/truck is truly necessary if you don't want to bottom out occasionally. Otherwise we could just hitch a trailer to the Merc and forget about a truck.
Reliability of the Explorer: I should clarify that it hasnt broken down for a while (six months?), and we paid about $400 dollars to fix the transmission. So theoretically the motor is fine. But the 4x4 is a bit messed up (it does engage, but not cleanly), and when we start it in the morning it sounds like gas is not getting to the engine, and you have to flutter the pedal a bit to get it warmed up. Sometimes it'll die in the morning while you're starting it. Which just means you have to restart it. Perhaps it needs some fuel-injection cleaning? That liquid you dump into the gas tank?
Two-car family: Mainly I want to sell one of them because after reading MMM, I feel ridiculous having two cars in this tiny town. My husband can easily drop me off at work, or I could get a bike and trailer for quick trips to the grocery store, which is only maybe 500 yards away. It's really hilly here, but no reason to be a wussypants, right? And we'd save on car insurance and maintenance.
Since we are clarifying the original post, I should add some financial details:
Our financial status is hair-on-fire emergency. We are pretty frugal, we only spend about $1000 dollars/month on EVERYTHING, but there's nothing left over for investing, or even health or car insurance or anything. Our emergency savings are at $0. And we have three little children and one on the way. We live in a touristy town, so part of the problem is that we're coming out of the off-season, which are savings did manage to just barely get us through. So come December the farm will start to produce and my husband will get some construction jobs and we'll be able to breathe a little easier (Baby is due in January, so it's cutting it close, but I'm hoping we can manage to get the $2000 dollars we need to pay the midwife.)
Prices in pesos, so divide by 12 to get dollars.
Utilities
Phone and Internet $450.00 (thought about giving this up, but I can call my family back home for free so its worth it to me)
electricity $250.00
Gas $233.00
Gasoline $1,400.00 (this seems high to me. Perhaps it is a fuel-injector problem?)
Food
Market $6,000.00 (I'm getting this down to $4000)
Others
Babysitter $4,000.00 (so I can work. I'm actually about to quit my low-paying job and take on private tutoring. So I'll be able to make much more in much less time, and pay the babysitter less)
Total $12,458.00
So after realizing what an emergency we are in, I've decided to look around and sell off anything unnecessary. Clothes, strollers, second-cars, tools, you get the idea. We've also started tracking expenses and budgeting for the first time, so I'm hoping that we will continue to live on $1000/month during this high-season, while making much more, so we can get our savings built way up. We also have a apartment to rent out on the second floor that will finally be ready this year, so hopefully we can get $600 dollars/week during the high season in rent money.
That would be a game-changer.
So I hope this clarifies our situation!