I would like to start this post by saying I am not a car expert by any means but I’ve been involved in two car purchases within the last year (keyword: involved). I also love shopping in general especially when you know exactly what you want and where to get it. My brothers and dad know way more about cars than I do so I consulted them about my top choices when I bought my car. Here are the top 5 tips that really helped in securing the car that I wanted.

1. Ask around especially to people who have a similar car to the one that you want. Not only can they give you insight about the car but they can also probably recommend a good car salesman from where they bought their car. My mom was actually my referral for the car that I bought so she ended up getting a referral reward and was really good at talking the salesman down on the price as she knows him pretty well.
2. This was also when I discovered that my mom is actually pretty good at math (even though we usually went to my dad for math homework help. My mom’s side of the family does have a lot of accountants though so this is probably why she’s good at haggling/negotiation math. If I told you how much money she saved us on a limited edition car, you probably wouldn’t believe it. So if you have access to someone who knows how to play with business numbers really well, you should definitely bring that person with you when you are buying a car.
3. Car fax. If you are in North America, there’s a website and app called car fax where you can look at different cars and it tells you their price as well as their features. This is a way to do really good research because you already know the price range for the car you want before you even step into the dealership. You can also buy cars through carfax from dealerships and other individuals selling cars. If you’re in a different car, you can definitely visit different dealerships and figure out the price range that way. The beauty of carfax though is that it also tells you the history of the car in terms of ownership and accidents. For example, my car was a dealership car for dropping customers off when their cars were being serviced. Therefore, my car basically didn’t have a real owner and the miles/kilometers driven on the car were really low.
4. Car buying season. If you can avoid it, don’t buy a car after tax season or around the holidays. This is because a lot of people have money to buy cars during this time. Therefore, car dealers are usually not willing to negotiate as much because there’s a large demand. The best time to buy a car would probably be in the middle of the year between May and October.
5. Car features. My quote on cars among many things is “once you go high, you never want to go low” (sorry I kind of stole your line, Michelle Obama). My car is an SUV and I really find compact cars to not be as comfortable to drive now. I also find that the sun doesn’t hit you as much in a high car. But of course, there are a lot of good-looking compact cars so it just depends what floats your boat ehem car. Also, I really like other features that my car has: seat warmers, sunroof, blindside navigation, lane detection assistance, Bluetooth calling, very good fuel economy, etc.

I will say if you are accident prone that blindside navigation really helps and has saved me from getting hit or hitting other people so it is the MVP of my car’s features. I wish you the best of luck in buying a car when that time comes for you. 🙂 ❤