Car buying trip

The front end of my 1999 Mercury Grand Marquis started making some strange noises last week. A trip to my buddy the mechanic revealed about $1000 worth of repairs would be required. Hmm... I have a ten year old car with 125,000 miles on it... the auto industry is in crisis. I figured it might be a good time to go down to the local car dealer. I found a great little Ford Focus for $10,000. When I tried to buy the car, the salesman told me "they like to see 30% down". I asked what the interest rate was going to be. They had about three different people sit down with me and try to talk about payments. I insisted I wanted to know what the hell the interest rate was. Finally somebody told me what the interest rate was 10%. I walked out. One of the reasons why I have really good credit is because I try to avoid over-paying for stuff!

On my way home from the Ford dealer, I saw Toyota had 0% financing signs in the windows. I know I won't be able to get one of their cars for $10,000, but I'll get that back when I go to trade it in.

For those of you that are interested, I was offered $400 for my old Mercury!