The mid-life crisis

Introduction

In my post a couple of weeks ago about leasing my first car and reading more about car leases, let me tell you what came out of that.  This all happened within a 2 week time frame by the way.  For a quick background, my first car was a…oh wait…that’s a password security question… one of the cars I drove when I was growing up was a Mitsubishi Eclipse in high school and after that, a Mitsubishi 3000GT.  After that was a manual Toyota Scion TC, which I nicknamed “Thumper” because the young kid I bought it from installed a huge subwoofer in the car, and I could literally “thump” on the highway.  Eventually, I got too old and wanted to eat and drink while driving (no more stick for me,) so I sold the Scion TC and moved to a Hyundai Elantra for the past number of years (I hope that wasn’t a password question.)  Anyway, as you can see, I’ve been fairly frugal in my car choices even though all of my friends were driving BMW’s, etc.

Infinity Q40

As you can read from Philip’s post, he gave an example of an Infinity Q40.  He linked to the Slickdeals thread here, and I read through the entire thread.  I was surprised to learn it was still going on.  Well, my train of thought after reading it was – if my Hyundai is depreciating $1K a year, and this Q40 is going for $250/month, that’s $3K a year…. then I think the enjoyment of driving the Q40 over the Hyundai was worth $2,000 a year to me (or roughly $166 a month).  Shoot, that’s my profit on just 1 Redbird card a month I thought!

I then Googled the 3 Infinity car dealerships in the Seattle area, and I emailed all 3 of them.  I told all 3 that I wanted no money down and what’s the best price they can do for me for a 2 year, 10K miles lease.  The best offer came back from the Kirkland dealership surprisingly (if you don’t live in Seattle, then Kirkland is a pretty rich suburb of Seattle.)  Lynnwood came back with the 2nd best offer, and Tacoma literally told me they could not match Kirkland’s price.  The irony is that Tacoma is probably the poorest out of the 3 locations (they are a 45 minute drive South out of Seattle).  All I could think was maybe their rent is cheaper and so they are able to “sit” on their inventory more than Kirkland.

Negotiations

The Kirkland sales rep actually called me over the phone and told me I could get the $41,200 MSRP car for about $33,800 with no money down.  The money factor was ridiculously low and that my monthly payment would be about $350.  He also gave me the residual of 63% (might have been 62%.)  I then had an email exchange with Lynnwood and after 20 emails back and forth, they would not give me the full set of numbers.  At one point, he was trying to sell me one w/o Nav (a lower MSRP) to hit my target monthly payments, and then tried to do a 3 year lease on me.  Basically, all the negotiation tactics to confuse the customer.  I wasn’t having it. Eventually they landed on something like $330 a month.

Test Drive

That weekend, my wife and I went to test drive the car.   Her first thought when she saw the car was, “Uhh that car is too old looking.  We don’t need a new car.”  Even when I took her for a test drive, she said it felt the same as riding in the Hyundai.  I think she was exaggerating since a) the Q40 was roomier b) had leather seats and c) just all around nicer.  Eventually, I found out she just didn’t like the appearance of the car.  The sales guy did mention that it was ‘end of month’ and he could probably beat Lynnwood and go down to $325.  At that price and the fact the wife didn’t approve, we passed on the car.  Maybe if he had gone down to the $250 that I was expecting, I might be driving the Q40 right now.

Fast Forward a Week

A week later, as I was looking around online, I found a used 2011 Acura RDX SUV tech pkg w/ low miles for about $31K at a Lexus dealership.  I also saw a used fully loaded 2011 Acura A6 Prestige w/ 60K miles for $28K.  We went to Lexus first and drove the RDX.  It was very nice.  I could see myself driving it.  Then the Lexus salesguy asked if I wanted to drive the RX 350.  So I took it for a spin as well, and while it was nicer than the Acura, I didn’t feel it was $4K nicer.  In the end, we passed on both cars and then went to Audi.

Audi Dealership

Let me pause right now and give you background info.  My roommate 6 years ago went to test drive an Audi S5 when it first came out.  He loved the car and would have bought one if it came in automatic (which I believe the 1st year it did not.)  A year passed, and he never looked back on the car.  Then 2-3 years after that, I went to test drive a newer S5 with automatic.  At the time, the dealer wanted something like $53K for it used.  I told him $50K.  Then I told him we could split the diff at $51,500.  He countered with $52,125.  This is after he spat in my face by only giving me $6K tradein for my Scion TC that I eventually sold 3 years later privately for $8K.  So we did NOT do the sale for a measly $750.

Back to the present, my wife and I went to Audi after the Lexus dealership.  I wanted to test drive an A5 (I was too old to be vroom-vrooming in the S5.)  I realize a coupe is different than an SUV, but I wanted to test drive it to see what I’d miss out on if I bought an SUV.  I learned from the salesman that there were only slight differences externally between the A5 and S5; the biggest difference is the engine.  Anyway, as I was test driving that fully loaded 2014 A5 Premium Plus, I just had the biggest grin on my face.  The car was definitely fun to drive!  When we got back, reality came knocking on the door since that car was $44K.  That was out of my price range, and plus, if I was going to buy one, I wanted to do homework beforehand to see where I could get the lowest price.

Audi A6

After that, we went over to BMW Bellevue who had a used Audi A6.  It was top of the line and was aggressively priced.  We took it for a spin, and while it was nice, I didn’t have the grin on my face.  Maybe if I was 50 and wanted to cruise around in a luxurious car, I would have bought it for $28K.  But after driving that A5, it just wasn’t the same.

On the drive home, my loving wife (had to throw that out there) could see that I enjoyed driving that A5 way more than those other cards.  She agreed to let me get the car, but I needed to go price shopping first.

Sound financial advice

I had a talk with a coworker at work who probably gave me the best advice of all.  He said, “Look Vinh, you can’t think of car buying as a sound financial decision.  I drove a Honda Accord for years, and it got me to point A to point B.  I was fine with it.  I even drive an Acura MDX on the weekends now and it’s fine too.  But man, when I get in my [BMW] 5-series, I just smile.”  And that’s what eventually sold me.  For most of my life, I’ve driven cars that got me from point A to point B.  I never actually got excited to drive my car.  I hated driving throughout college, but that might have been because of the 3.5 hour one-way drive from college to home.  And I also realized that I’m not getting any younger and that if I don’t get a nice car now, once the family comes, this’ll push it out 10+ years. Maybe this is what a mid-life crisis thought process feels like.

A decision is made…or is it?

If there’s one thing you should never do is ask your friends or coworkers for car advice once you’ve made up your mind.  I told one of my good friends about the A5, and he immediately asked me, “Why don’t you go test drive the S5?”  This is the same guy who JUST turned in his 3 series for an M3 last month.  So clearly, he was extremely YOLO biased.  He also told me to test drive an M3 as well.  Then a coworker asked if I tried out the [BMW] 4-series.  Then the same good friend told me to get an RS5.  Now he was just talking crazy.  That and my mind was exploding with all these options.  So what did I end up doing?  Well, I Google’d for an Audi S5.  Found a 2011 Premium Plus 32K miles mildly-loaded at a local non-Audi dealership.  Test drove it at lunch.  Came back that night and this happened:

Addendum

Of course I financed the entire car.  I also paid for a 4 year extended warranty.  The nice Finance lady asked me if I wanted to put any money down.  I told her NOPE!  Then she goes, “Are you sure?  We can take up to $2,500 with a credit card…you’ll earn airline miles.”  HAHAHA  Well, then of course I’ll charge $2,500 on my Barclays Arrival!  I asked her if anyone has ever paid for an entire car with a credit card.  She goes, “Nope.  I’ll get in trouble since we have to pay the credit card fees.”  I was slightly hoping she would have said, “Yeah, there was this one guy who we let charge $50,00 on a credit card….”