On Friday we bought a new car. We weren't without a car payment very long, but it was long enough to save up a little bit of money toward this one. We didn't end up trading ours in either because my husband thinks it will be easy to sell it private party and make more money that way. There's nothing really wrong with it, other than a windshield wiper issue that my husband will be fixing this weekend. It seems to be a magnet for rocks, though, and that's really the reason we stopped driving it much. I just hope we don't have that issue with this new car! We have had the Impala 3.5 years and have replaced the windshield twice, and it has a crack again. We live right off of a dirt road, but most of the cracks happened when we were out on the highway instead.
We have been researching cars for months now, trying to decide what we wanted to buy next. I think my husband would have preferred it if I would have been willing to get an SUV and get rid of our minivan, but our minivan still runs great and hasn't given us much trouble at all. Plus an SUV comes with a much larger payment than a car, especially with all the features that we wanted. And we don't even need something that big most of the time. We have a truck to haul things in, and only one child, so unless I'm taking a group of kids somewhere, a car is big enough for most of my driving. So that's the main focus I've had. :)
