Good morning. As of about...

Good morning. As of about 9pm last night Angie and I our now the owners of a new Hyundai Elantra GLS and a car payment. Its very exciting for us, as this is our first of both. Let me tell you, nothing brings home that your not a teenager anymore like when you wake up early in the morning to gush about your new four-door sedan. We got an excellent deal, that was part my negotiating and part luck.

Before we went, we purchased a Consumer Reports New Car Price Survey. It gave us accurate numbers to negotiate from and was definitely worth the $25 we spent on it. I negotiated more than 25% off the sticker price of the car, actually getting the price lower than what the dealer showed me was his invoice. I don't for a moment believe that he lost money of the car, or even made no profit. I'm not stupid. As Angie flatly told the sales manager, "How do we know you didn't just go over there and make that up? That's what Dane would do?" It was shortly after this comment that he came back with the price we wanted.

As far as luck goes, it always helps if the car you negotiating over has some reasonably major "defect" that you really can live with, but you for the sake of argument don't want. The only silver 2002 Elantra on the lot had a spoiler. Angie's had a Hyundai Scoup with a spoiler for the last 6 years and let me tell you, the only thing it added to our driving experience was more weight in the back. So I balked, over and over and over again about that spoiler. When our negotiating got stuck, and the sales manager wouldn't budge, I just pointed out the spoiler and said I'd walk. He said stay, and wrote a new offer exactly like what I wanted.

Our other bit of luck had to do with timing. We went in on the 20th of the month, because we figured it was close enough to the end of the month that the salespeople would be hungry, and we lucked out and went on one of the hottest days this year. We were the only ones on the lot kicking the tires, and when we went in to negotiate, we were the only people in the building. It must have been some sort of car sales karma, because as soon as we signed on the dotted line, the lot filled with potential buyers.