Decisions, Decisions

Yoohoo! Here I am. Did you think I had fallen into the cyberspace abyss? Nearly. I was sucked into the vortex of car buying. Yikes.

It’s a long story, but the short of it is that we decided to downgrade and then to upgrade and then to upgrade again. We were going to buy a 2007 BMW 335i, then a 2008 BMWxi, but then the plant closed for the German summer holidays, so now we are ending up with a 2009 BMW 335xi (4-wheel drive sedan) in Montego Blue with warming Saddle Brown leather seats, xenon headlights, and a bunch of other nerdy stuff that I’m just too girly to remember. Phew. It will be here in September.

This has been some crazy discernment process, let me tell you. First we had to choose between a small commuter car and a family car. With the Galant on its last wheels, we decided to opt for something that could step in and take its place if need be. Then we decided between a BMW and Mercedes, which is a feat considering that here the rivalry between the two is akin to the vicious Ford versus Chevy truck debate between the Texas farm boys of my youth. Then after that we had to decide whether or not we truly deserved a car so nice. That was the biggest hurdle.

All throughout this deciding period I kept thinking about a great quote from Dorothy Alvarez that I swiped from my friend Amber’s Facebook page: “I want a new car. God wants to redeem the universe. Therein lies the problem.”

Was it responsible to buy such an extravagant car when people are hungry in the world?

We wrestled with the question for weeks. We want to save for our kids to go to college. We want to be able to travel home to the States when we want and to travel within Europe while we are here. And we want to be good world citizens and live generously. BUT we also considered that Dave has worked hard for a long time. He has driven the old clunker Galant for 14 years, and he drove his Jeep for nearly as many years before that. He’s 43. Life is short. We don’t waste a lot of money and we are in good shape financially. So why shouldn’t we get the car we really want if we can still live in financial balance?

We already have far too much guilt in our lives. What it finally came down to for us was a realization that it’s not an issue of deserving. Does anyone deserve nice things? We don’t deserve a BMW, but we are blessed to be able to get one. For us it is about gratitude. If we are blessed with something good, we must be grateful. Taking good things for granted, well, that would be something to feel guilty about. After all, if we felt guilty we couldn’t enjoy our new car and then it would truly be wasted. Right?