There may also be tag and title fees which may not show up in the car purchase numbers. I'd check with your DMV to see what to expect.

In bizarro car news, the dealership I bought my car from has been pestering me to buy my car back. It's not an automated bot, recall or anything, just the gm I've exchanged email with before, it's just weird. I'm guessing the resale value is going up. So I finally bothered to reply with "unless you can give me current model at what I have left in 0% loan -about 1.2K, minus increased insurance-with trade in or full sale in a new model- ya gotta leave me alone. You can laugh now."

Can't wait for the response. (Or lack thereof.)

My worklife is on fire. Even my Pollyanna boss is starting to sound like eyeore me. This is concerning.

Thank you Windsparrow! That is perfect! It still seems sort of overwhelming to do without a car-- maybe I have to rent a car to buy a car?

On my phone now, but I'll comment on the car stuff in the morning. (I'm in automotive fleet management and I worked for one of the Big 3 previously, so I have access to lots of info that may be helpful.)

Andi's advice is good. I'll try to fill in the holes if you would rather use a dealership.

Thanks Maria! I might rather use a dealership, because I think they might take care of the DMV stuff for me.

I like the idea of going to a dealership. To be honest, I don't want to have to dig through private ads to find the ones I can trust.

edit: I have less faith in my neighbors than Andi does.

We bought our car from Hertz, who states upfront they don't haggle (but the prices are lower than a dealership). The Corolla we bought was less than Kelly Blue Book price for its condition and age/mileage. It was a really easy process, and I'd do it again.

That said, we did a lot of research ahead of time on what makes/models/years were ranked highest (Consumer Reports is definitely your friend). Once we narrowed it down to make/model/year (and/or mileage), then we searched on Cars.com to see who in the area might have what we were looking for in our price range. Hertz was consistently the lowest price.

When we bought the Corolla, it had been 12 years since I had bought a car, and back then I didn't know that Hertz and Enterprise sold some of their fleet when it hit a certain mileage. (Or maybe they didn't, back in 2004.) So I was dubious about whether we could trust a car bought from a rental company.

The last piece of research we did was to look for information on whether you really can trust a car from a rental company as much as you could trust a car from a dealer (IOW, nothing is perfect, but would cars from Hertz be secretly fucked up?). The general consensus we found was that they're just as reputable as dealers.

In the end, I've driven Toyotas for 20 years, so I decided I could trust a used Toyota from Hertz as much as I could from a dealer. And so far, so good. I *really* liked the fact that they stated upfront they don't haggle. Their only hard sell was on an extended warranty (which we didn't purchase). And that was honestly more of a medium sell than a hard sell, so it was fine.

I've just signed up for Consumer Reports. Imprezas look to be right in my price range.

Sophia, I have always been fortunate to have friends with cars willing to go car shopping with me when I was starting in a carless state or one time I bought a car from another college student at the end of the school year (who was selling his car to buy a plane ticket to go further than the car was safe to drive; I had a mechanic who owed me a favor, got the car fixed up nicely within my budget).

edit: I have less faith in my neighbors than Andi does.

This is definitely a case of "trust but verify".

Sheryl, FWIW, we switched Rose at 21 months from her longtime daycare to the one we'd been on the waitlist for, and I had a lot of your same concerns: She's been there for so long! All the teachers there love her and know her so well! How will she handle it?

And she was totally fine. She adjusted quickly and the new daycare was a huge improvement (which was why we'd been on their waitlist in the first place). We ended up being really glad that we moved her when we did.