When my husband died in January 2004, my car was 18 months old. In fact I had choices, since we had 4 total vehicles. I worked my way down through them, selling them off gradually until it can down to just my car. It’s now been 4 ½ years down the road and time to trade cars.

When my friend Bid decided to trade her 12 year old pick up I offered her my son’s help on trading because men seem to make better traders than women. We’re more vulnerable I think, and a man is firmer. She did it all by herself though, made a really good deal and bought a cute little Jeep Liberty. I’d assumed I’d trade for another Buick, probably the Lucerne as I drove a Park Avenue and am unwilling to give up all the bells and whistles.

I thought of trading last summer, after all the car was 5 years old, still relatively low mileage but then I really did like not having a car payment. Then I thought I’d wait until the building sold before I faced that decision. Well, then the building sold.

I’d begun researching cars and having been a passenger in Bid’s Jeep and having such good visibility in it, I began looking at little SUV’s.

Along with many others, I’d drive the dealership lots at night to scope out the various models. I’m not much on foreign made automobiles, didn’t want to spend a fortune, but wanted those bells and whistles. They were seemingly hard to come by. My car has back up assist which means it chimes (after all, it’s a Buick) if I am within 4 feet of anything. I really like that feature. I don’t like the length of my car however so wanted the smaller 5 passenger type SUV. When I found out I wasn’t going to bounce back from foot surgery, it was almost a blessing to delay both the decision and the confrontation with the scary car salesmen. Feeling vulnerable enough just being a woman I sure wasn’t going to go car shopping with a walker!

I narrowed my choices down to 5 and last week decided to face the dreaded car salesmen, inspired by Bid’s courage and using her decision to just do it. Armed with the knowledge of my car’s value (only you need to get trade in value NOT selling price) I started with Ford. They had 1 model I liked while GM had the other 4. To my surprise I spent four hours and the salesman took me to GM also and we drove all the models there I wanted to try. He’d go and get them and bring them to me since I was walking, but still a lot like Lurch. I’d about decided to go for the mid sized Ford model that was much more money and not "cute" but had the features I wanted. I gave the decision a 3 day rest and thought things over, and realized I didn’t like the exterior of the car. Usually I’m decisive but this got to be ridiculous! I realized I was spending more time on this than on the decision I made to get married when I was 18 and that worked out very well. I "built" the car I wanted on-line early Saturday morning, took it to the salesman at Ford, haggled a little, both of us got most of what we wanted and I bought a car. They did not have the exact one I wanted, but located one, sent a car hauler to get it and now I own it. It is a Ford Escape Limited, has metallic paint, and many bells and whistles. While owning it won’t last as long as my marriage, I hope it proves to be as happy. I’m also no longer afraid of car salesmen.