Last September, I bought my first new car. A 2007 Saturn Ion. Yeah, I know it’s not a Mercedes or a Mustang, but it looks nice and is a comfortable ride. It took my parents decades to actually buy new cars for themselves. My father had no idea how I was going to pay for it, but there’s the miracle of automobile financing. Essentially, I put money down and then keep making payments and that’s that. I didn’t even have a steady job at the time I bought the car, or rather put money down on it. I was a freelance writer struggling to get by, but they still approved my credit. According to the car salesman, that’s the easy part. I really had to trade up cars. My old car was a 96 Ford escort and it was like living with a roommate for too long. We were just sick of each other. Plus, it was an old car. It was constantly having all sorts of problems. Right before I got rid of it, its brakes were in terrible condition. Before that, one of the belts near the engine gave out, right in the middle of traffic too. Basically, with all the work I had to put into the car, it ends up costing me less just to get a new one and make payments on it. At the end of it all, I was ready to find a canyon or something somewhere and push my car off a cliff down into it so that no one would ever have to drive it again.