I’ve been through the wringer on cars. In 2018 I bought a Fiat 500e, a little electric car with a 70 mile range just for maximizing my solar panels. I totaled it 60 days later when a rock hit my car on the highway and destroyed the battery pack. I was out about $2,000 after insurance.

Then I bought a Chevy Volt. That thing is still running great.

I had a 1997 Ford Expedition, a childhood car that my parents passed on to me when they decided to get new cars. I drove it for a while but gas was expensive and after we got the Volt it sat a lot. During covid my neighbor’s tree dropped a huge branch on it and shattered one of the windows. He didn’t pay me a dime, and a replacement window could not be found after two years of searching so it was scrapped.

Then I bought a Dodge Grand Caravan from a family member with a little over 100k miles on it. The transmission blew after about a year and I was out $3,500 on it.

So with the baby on the way we decided we needed a reliable car that’s big enough for the car seat. We decided to look only at Honda, Toyota, and Kia. We looked high and low at about 20 different cars and found that the used car market is complete trash.

First of all, every car is $25,000 minimum. It doesn’t matter if it’s 10 years old, you’re not getting off the dealership lot without a 25k car.

One dealer tried to sell us a 2016 $22,500 Honda Odyssey with 90k miles on it. It needed the timing belt replaced and that would have put me at $26,750 on a car that high blue booked at $14,500 on the private party side.

Then we had another dealer ask for 20k on a 2019 Odyssey with 75k miles and the dirtiest, ripped up interior I’ve ever seen on a lot.

Most of the cars I looked at were dirty, we found a 23k Honda Pilot, a 2019, that was clean but the battery was dead and we couldn’t test drive it. It had 89k miles on it.

Then the same lot had a 2020 Honda Passport and the back taillight was busted.

We went up to Placerville, found a great little dealership there and checked out to Kias both with tons of miles on them and passed.

We also found a Kia Telluride they tried to sell us at a Chevy dealer, they took $3300 off, but we said we wanted to check the carfax and found it has an open recall for a fire hazard – without any current remedies.

Finally we ended up at an Acura dealer and found a 2020 MDX with seating for 7, white like our other car, with a spacious, black leather interior, and a mere 67,809 miles on it. We drive about 4000 miles per year, and expect to our maybe 1,000 or 1,500 miles on the MDX each year for now. It was priced at $24k and some change and with tax and license we were out the door for under 27k. It blue booked at sticker price, so we were satisfied with the purchase – and I think and hope that this car will last for quite a while as long as we maintain it.