The Love of What Money Can Buy

"Hey, I didn’t know this is the car you drove!” That was Joe’s greeting when he spied me from across the parking lot at church the other day. “Wow, you are a humble guy,” he said in mock reverence. This, from a guy on a bicycle who doesn’t own a car himself. We had a good laugh at my expense, but it got me thinking.

Well, it may be time for a new car, but I haven’t quite decided yet. On the one hand I don’t need one and I’m sure I can put the money to better use. Besides, I don’t actually have the money at the moment, though I anticipate I will within the next six months or so. Also my venerable little truck, despite pushing 200K miles, has no mechanical problems to speak of. Truth be told, there’s just about nothing I couldn’t fix on it so I could, in theory, keep this truck going indefinitely.

On the other hand, this little beastie is showing its age. Check out the pictures. Need I say more? Besides, my kid sister is soon approaching driving age and I need to think about how to get her into a car. For better or worse that task is going to fall on her siblings. Unfortunately, this little truck is probably a poor choice for a hand-me-down for any number of reasons, including its manual transmission.

Here’s another input to the calculus: I’m smitten with the little Mazda roadster that was the subject of the last few posts (here, here and here). I've never been much into cars, but I kind of regret not getting my little BMW Z3 roadster way back when I was seriously considering it. It wouldn’t be the prudent thing, I’d said to myself--much the same sort of thing I’m saying to myself now. Even though it turned out to be a great decision to buy my little truck when everyone said I was nuts for buying a two-seater, this might this may be the last time I can justify a little two-seater.

Well, I have some time yet to decide. I’ll revisit in a couple months. Maybe a better use for the money will come up in the interim.