Friends - I'm trying to convince myself that I Do Not Need a New Car, and what would really help me is a bunch of people reinforcing that this is the case.
Current car is a very reliable, low kilometre four door Nissan Micra (smallest hatchback available). It has a three star safety rating. It has been a fantastic car for the six years I've owned it after buying it second-hand. We're a one-car household. It is extremely fuel efficient.
Possible future car would be a late model slightly larger hatchback - probably a Mazda 3 or Toyota Corolla - with a five star safety rating and much more space for humans and, crucially, bootspace. These cars are still fairly small and fuel efficient. This description of our possible future car is true whether we buy a new car now (which I need you all to tell me not to do, please!) or wait until it becomes a more pressing issue.
I am thinking about buying a new car now because of safety concerns (largely driven by emotion, not logic) and bootspace / space in general. We have our first baby cooking, due May next year, and I am having a very emotional urge to make sure the car will be as safe as humanly possible. Additionally, our boot is so small that we can't fit a collapsed pram in it! Which will be quite annoying when we have a baby seat in the back and heaps of crap that people seem to need to take everywhere with said baby.
Arguments I am using to convince myself not to blow a heap of money on a new car when my current car is fine:
Safety is an illusion. The safest choice I can make is to minimise the amount of time my baby spends in a car, period. Plus the difference between a three star safety rated car and a five star safety rated car is infinitesimally small compared to the advances in safety just in the last twenty years, right? My 2008 model car with its three star safety rating is at least a HUNDRED times safer than the cars I was driven around in as a baby almost three decades ago, right? My parents' generation didn't even have seatbelts! My FIL was injured as a child because his car door FELL OPEN and there was no such thing as a seatbelt or child seat so he FELL OUT OF THE CAR ONTO THE ROAD AND HIT HIS HEAD. My three star safety rated car is a thousand times safer than that, right? Maybe even a million times? A gazillion?!
Maybe the tight fit won't be so bad. We can collapse one of the back passenger seats to make room for the pram. And maybe we won't need to bring the pram everywhere anyway? Baby won't actually get driven around *that* much for at least the first year while a parent is home with him. And if it really does suck...
We can always buy the new car if using our current tiny car really does suck. Let's say that the current car really is so annoying to load up with baby paraphernalia that it makes us crazy. We could THEN make an informed decision that yes, it really is worth buying a new car, and do it then.
In another few years we might need/want two cars anyway, and we'd be sorry we traded in or sold our current car. It's possible that within the next fiveish years with two working parents and as many as two or three small kids we'll end up deciding it's worth having two cars. In which case, I'd be gutted that we'd got rid of our beloved little hatchback when we "traded up". Whereas if we just wait and see, it could be that by the time we actually decide we 'need' the bigger hatchback, we'll be in a better position to know whether one or two cars is more realistic for our household.
It's better not to spend this money right now when we're about to decrease our incomes and increase our expenditure. We don't know yet exactly how much the baby will cost to maintain and run feed and stuff. We can definitely easily afford a new car, but we might regret adding the liability / cost if our savings rate isn't as high as we want it to be once we've made this MASSIVE upcoming lifestyle change.
Discussed all of this with my husband (of course) and he agrees with all my arguments and would rather wait to see if we definitely need a bigger car in another year... or five, but he is also faced with an emotional, pregnant wife so would basically do whatever I wanted to do at this point in time. Which is why I need your support in NOT buying a car :-)
What I am asking of you, wonderful Mustachians:
Please reinforce the logic of my arguments AGAINST buying a new car, outlined above. Share your anecdata (or heck, even actual facts!). Help me stay strong.
