The Newest Member of Our Family

This is the reason why I didn't post yesterday. We spent most of the day car shopping. C and I decided that we needed something that is better on gas than the gas guzzler we've had for the past two years. Despite what people may want to believe and what officials are saying in the news, gas prices aren't going down.

This might seem sort of sudden, right? I never mentioned that we were planning on getting a new car. Well, we had actually been talking about it for months but trading in the 4Runner was really hard to do. Deciding to go shopping yesterday was spur of the moment though. See. We have a plan. It's a three year plan that we have put into place with the idea that C is not going to reenlist in 10/09 but will be extending his contract instead until the summer of 2010 and then getting out altogether. Why would he not reenlist after putting in 12 years and only being 8 away from retiring? That is a very long and convoluted story that nobody would understand unless you were in our situation and I'm not trying to justify why we have come to this decision. And besides, things could change in 3 years.

Back to the plan. We are going on the assumption that C is getting out of the Marine Corps in 2010, he will have his paralegal certificate by January, 2010, and I will have my bachelor's by the end of the summer semester of '09, and we will be selling our house in Vermont by no later than November of '08. With all this in mind, we have written out what I am calling the "__Family Manifesto". This plan, or manifesto if you will, is a written document detailing how we will be completely debt free (minus my student loans) by the end of the next three years and will be able to survive on our own without the Marine Corps breathing down our necks.

I have hesitated blogging about our plan because once the cat is out of the bag, you sorta have to live up to it and I don't want to end up eating my words. But in the end, I figure that the more people that know, the more it will motivate us to stick to our plan, accept the sacrifices that we will have to make for three years (bye bye, 4Runner :( ), and eventually come out on top.

So, we welcome the newest member of our family, the Rav 4. It's a purty car, it's good on gas, and it has more storage than the 4Runner did. It also has a better stereo system than the 4Runner did, go figure. The bad thing? And the ironic thing? The first full day that we had it (today), C got a speeding ticket on base. Stinking Cpl. Whoever. May your bad juju get you.

We also welcome the next three years filled of small sacrifices. No eating out, no unnecessary spending which means no new gadgets :( , no extravagant trips or outings. But it's all for the greater good.