Big Decision Made

 

For the last several months Max and I have been wrestling with the idea of selling our Goldwing motorcycle and buying a Jeep. We love our Goldwing but with the way that we travel with it, it actually limits our lifestyle.

When we are up north in cold country we have to leave earlier than we want to get back south before it gets too cold to ride the bike back south. Travel on rainy day’s is not fun anyway and riding the bike in the rain even more so. But the biggest disadvantage is that we can not go where we want to. The bike just does not like dirt and gravel roads.

Several factors led us to this decision and we decided to go ahead and sell the Goldwing and buy a Jeep. Once a decision is made, Max and I do not mess around. We started looking at Jeeps to learn about them. We started looking at used Jeeps and the first thing we realized is that they seem to hold their value. A  five to six year old Jeep was still claiming a hefty price.

We went out and looked at a few used Jeeps. One was a 2006 and the other a 2011 model. We like the 2011 model really well but the price just seemed so high. With the price of what they wanted for a 2011 we found out that we could get a low level “New” Jeep for a few thousand more. What’s a few thousand more on a fixed income right!

We thought about the 2011 model hard and checked the carfax report on it. It was registered from a rental company. It had 32,000 miles on it all driven by different people. I was not comfortable with that. We stared checking out the ads for Jeeps all around southern Cal and most of the ones we were interested in were all bought from rental fleets. Our search was not going well.

Another thing I had to consider is that California will charge me the sales tax even though I would be registering in another state. South Dakota does not have a sales tax but just a one time 3 percent excise tax. That means I would have to pay California the 7.8 percent sales tax plus the 3 percent excise tax in South Dakota. Uggg!

Now to save a little money we started our search out of the state of California. Arizona or Nevada will waive the sales tax as long as you are registering in another state. We started our search again and still ran into the same issue at the used car dealers of their inventory coming from rental fleets.

The more we looked, the more we were coming to the conclusion that if we could find a new Jeep that we would be better off with a warranty and the comfort of knowing that it was not abused by hundreds of different drivers.

We were concerned also that since our workcamping job was getting ready to start, our ability to look around and make a trip out of state would diminish. We then spotted an ad for a new Jeep at a Las Vegas dealer. It had the basic things we wanted, like automatic transmission and a removable hard top and the color was not black or white. The price was a lot more from our original price range but we really did not want to have any mechanical issues.

In typical Dave and Max fashion, we figured we could get the Jeep now and then sell the Goldwing later to re-coop some of what we would spend. We hopped on the bike and took a road trip to Las Vegas to check the Jeep out.

It was 288 miles from Palm Desert to Las Vegas, and we made it to the dealer around 1:30 in the afternoon. After some negotiations at 7:00 pm we left the dealer with this little beauty.

It is a basic Jeep but we know it will provide us with the ability to really explore.

We were exhausted by this time so we found us a room for the night and then had dinner at a Famous Dave’s BBQ. So Saturday morning we got up and Max drove the Jeep and I took the bike and we headed to Big Bear Lake to drop the Jeep off at the campground we will be at this summer and then headed back to Palm Desert to our Rig.

We will be leaving Palm Desert this morning to head up to Big Bear and get set up for the summer. Our orientation starts on Monday and we are suppose to start work on the 21st. I will be placing ads right away to hopefully get the Goldwing sold soon.

Enjoy Your Day!