Our 40k Car Purchase – almost
I have this dream/goal of semi-retiring in 2018 and spending more time with my kids and outdoors. A camper van would be a great vehicle to achieve this. Two weeks ago I saw a suitable car on the internet by a dealer near us. It costed around 40k – a lot of money for a car, but the list price was over 50k. Last week my wife and I visited the car dealer to see that car.
Sure, this would have been a dream come true. The price was good. But shall we really increase our monthly expenses? Also, buying a camper van would have meant lots of additional purchases (I expected another 4 to 5k). In the end the dealer offered a bad price for our current car and this made declining easier. But it was really tempting!
My reasons for not doing it:
- Spending 45k (or more like 35k after selling our current car) is less money invested.
- Increasing our monthly expenses is also delaying FIRE.
- We might not have enough time to properly use the car (weekend trips, holidays).
- When things (financially) go well, we can more easily afford a similar car in 2018 (even for full price).
On the other hand, the camper van might have lead to a lifestyle similar to what I aspire for 2018: spending more time with the kids in nature. So like my planned semi-retirement, it could have been a semi-dream-come-true…
What do you think? Is it worth delaying your FIRE date for (partially) living your dream now? (I would answer “yes” to that last question. Still I think not buying was the right decision.)
EurFI - European way to Financial Independence 
There's Value 0:16 on 2016-04-20 Permalink |
I also would say yes, and I agree that not buying the camper van was the right choice. You can start living towards that dream in cheaper ways e.g. getting the train up to some beautiful mountain areas and staying in a simple place is a lot cheaper than the expenses of the camper van… or just driving in your car to the forest and camping there is also cheap. You don’t need the camper van to enjoy it, but you just need to be minimalist on packing your normal car! Make it a challenge to the kids and they should enjoy trying to succeed 🙂
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eurfi 20:23 on 2016-04-20 Permalink |
Right. Last year I said to my oldest we would sleep in a tent – we didn’t do it. No excuses for this year.
Also, I have an idea to bring us closer to a camper van AND to FI. I will write about it in the blog, once it works.
Our current car is big enough for all the camping gear we have. So, there is really no excuse…
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There's Value 21:05 on 2016-04-20 Permalink
Go for it! Schedule some time in your diary, right now, to plan a few trips in the car!
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Will this savings account convince my wife? | EurFI - European way to Financial Independence 13:42 on 2016-07-16 Permalink |
[…] few months ago I had an idea. We both want our next car to be a camper van. We almost bought one a few months ago. My idea was to open a separate savings account and transfer each month the amounts of all saved […]
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Two Years of Blogging – Lessons from Thinking about FI | EurFI - European way to Financial Independence 10:07 on 2016-09-08 Permalink |
[…] year we started a special savings account were we accrue money for our dream – a camper van. I hope to further reduce our monthly expenses with this account (reducing costs to save more for […]
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Spending Summer Break with my Kids | EurFI - European way to Financial Independence 22:53 on 2018-01-18 Permalink |
[…] 2016 we almost bought a camper van. Of course I still have this wish (and will probably buy it, once retired). And for our road trip […]
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