A new car...?

My current vehicle, a 1997 Mazda Protégé, is going to start needing largely monthly investments to keep running. I bought it used, 6 months ago for $1500, I’m happy with that, and Jordan put a lot of work into it. We figure it’s probably worth about $2000 now. That said, I’m not willing to invest a great sum of money to keep it running.
We are also looking at purchasing a home in the next 3-5 years, so actively look for ways to increase our credit rating and our savings.

With both of these things in mind, I am thinking about purchasing a ­new, highly economical vehicle.

Tonight we looked at the Hyundai Accent (GL 3 Door Manual). We could finance it for 36 months, 0% financing for about $450/month after taxes/levies. It comes with a 5 year, 100,000km warranty. I think it would be pretty fantastic to have the car paid off in three years and have insurance for five years.

Once my credit card is paid off, to which I’m putting $500/month (slightly accelerated currently) that could effectively go towards the car. The excess of course would go toward my student loan. I haven’t worked it all out yet, and I would also have to look at likely increased insurance costs – but it’s something that I’m going to consider doing.

The salesmen we met was actually also a mortgage broker (conveniently enough), so we chatted to him a bit about credit, and debt ratios, and mortgages....that will come in another post.