It’s about time you got here! I’ve got so much more to teach you about buying a car! Did you miss the first three lessons? Click here. Now, where was I? Oh yes. It was 1990 and we had just gotten screwed, buying our little blue truck. In 1991 we moved to Wisconsin. We still had the Dodge Shadow (the one without the cassette player) and decided that we really wanted to get something else. We weren’t sure what that something else would be, so we just started “doing research” by going around to different dealers and checking out what they had to offer. That brings me to lesson four.Lesson…

Next to a home purchase, a new vehicle ranks right up there among the biggest purchases of someone’s life. You would think that people would do the proper research–and I’m not talking about research on the car itself; I’m talking about learning how to buy one–but many don’t. Jim and I didn’t, when we first started buying cars. We have been screwed by car dealers* several times, and each time was maddening. However, we have learned many things through those terrible experiences over the last 23 years, and since the car-buying process is now an exciting one for me**, and because so many people walk into that situation with their…