It's been a crazy couple of weeks. As I mentioned briefly before, Amber's car was stolen a couple of weeks ago. And yes, it was a Honda. I knew that they were stolen quite often... just not that often. :-/ When we picked up the rental car we learned that 5 others had picked up rentals to replace their stolen Hondas over the past couple of days.

I was really kind of worried about how the process would go. I've never enjoyed dealing with insurance companies, but it seemed to go as smoothly as we could hope. The payout that we were given was more than we expected, and would easily cover the down payment for a new car after paying off the existing loan.

So on sunday we set off to try and find a new car for Amber. Good used cars are more expensive up here than they were in Florida. So it became clear that to get a car that we wanted, it probably was going to take a bigger loan than we wanted. With gas being so expensive it didn't make sense to try and save some money by getting a car that just burned a lot of gas.

We decided that either we'd like to stick with either a Honda or get another Toyota. We've had really good luck maintenance wise with both of them, and although we were a little skittish after learning how easy the Honda's are to steal, we also knew we could upgrade it later.

So after looking at cars for Amber for a while, we came across a used Prius. I've wanted one for a while, but they've always been out of my price range. Things are just a little too tight to deal with two higher-sized car loans. But still Amber gets me to test drive it. And I really like it.

Just a couple nights ago Amber and I had a talk over how I have no problem with us spending money on stuff for her, but I can't justify spending even a little for me when I feel like things are tight. This leads to me doing things like hurting my shoulder because I didn't feel right spending $20 to replace something that would help keep me stabilized on the ice.

Amber thinks that I maybe the best thing would be for me to get the Prius, and she could take my Corolla. We take a look at how much the loan would be for me to get, and it works out to be about $80 more than we were paying for Amber's old Honda. Not really that much worse. Somehow I let Amber talk me into getting the car that, deep down, I really wanted.... Something that the salesman couldn't do :-P

I'm still kind of stressed over it, but I really do like it. So after three years of looking at hybrids with envy, I finally have one. Amber's right, it really does fit my personality. It's hard not be be fascinated by the feedback that the computer gives you :-P

Hopefully the fear and stress of having spent more than I really wanted to for a car will wear off soon :)