New Wheels in 2020!

One of our future goals is to replace both of our aged, high-mileage vehicles in 2020. In fact, we had initially been making plans to replace Jeff’s vehicle earlier this year. We had started to do some test drives in April and found out that some auto manufacturers had gift card incentives for test-driving some of their vehicles. We actually received a $50 Visa gift card for test driving a Nissan Rouge. As we got involved with Project Money, we soon realized (and with the advice from our coach) that this was not the time to be buying a new vehicle. We immediately tabled these purchases till 2020 with plans to re-evaluate our finances at a later date.

Being involved with Project Money for the past months and creating our budgets and goals has shown us that we will be able to make this goal happen in 2020. The plan is to purchase a vehicle outright for Jeff, leaving only a single car loan for Sue’s vehicle. We wanted to make sure that this plan was feasible before we started looking at new cars. Next, we took the time to write down our needs versus wants in order to narrow down our searches. Looking at manufacturer and dealer incentives will also play a big part in what and where we buy.

This past Saturday, we had no real plans, so we decided to go and test drive some vehicles to narrow down the types of vehicles we were interested in. Before going out, we Googled which manufacturers were currently offering gift card incentives for test driving new vehicles. We found three manufacturers offering this! The bonus was that they were vehicles we both wanted to check out anyways. All we did was go to the dealer website, select the vehicle(s) we were interested in test driving (one manufacturer only offered a gift card on a specific model), filled out the pop-up window with the offer, printed off the code that was sent to us, and headed off to Madison. Luckily for us, all of these dealerships are located just 20 minutes from our home and all within a mile of each other.

In a matter of four hours, we test drove a total of seven vehicles. We also collected a total of $165 in Visa gift cards for doing something we were going to be doing anyways. Not only did we make some money, we were able to eliminate a couple of vehicles that we were no longer interested in. There was also a car that we hadn’t thought about, but after driving it, it was added to our list of possibilities. Pretty lucrative, right?

If you are in the position of needing to replace your vehicle, check out the manufacturer and dealership websites for current offers. It was well-worth our time – and would be for you too!