Hope you're able to resist the temptation!
I'm trying! We usually get a new car every 10 years so that we never have 2 car payments at the same time and keep taking turns. So it's been my turn since July 2016 and I have to say it feels great to have 0 car payments. Not having to pay any interest though makes it so tempting. It would make it easy to pay it down in 4 yrs without the worry that I need to pay it down faster to lower the interest paid. It would be a small dent in my snowball so I could still put an extra $1600/month into retirement.
I saw the commercial for it. I've never had a Subaru but they seem like good cars.
I never did either but they caught my eye now that they don't look like station wagons any more. My inlaws had one for years and loved it. My neighbor's mom love hers. Two of my neighbors have one and they both say they will buy another for their next car. A lady at my train station has the exact one I like and of course I had to ask her what she thinks of it, any problems with it, etc. She said she loves it and it's great in the snow.
One of the reasons I'm even considering it is because driving in the snow stresses me out so much and no matter how much snow it is, I have to get to work. This is life working at a hospital. Sometimes we sleep over though I haven't had to since my kids were born but before that I did it often. When I bought this minivan in 2006, our kids were 6 and 9 and we wanted more space for extra stuff, bikes, friends, etc. At the time, dh didn't have to go to work on snow days or he could go in late so he would drive me to the train in his 4 wheel drive truck. Within a few years of buying my car, his work started calling him in when it snows to repair the plows (he is a welder) It turned out to be great OT sometimes for continuous days at a time when it's big snow so he doesn't want to miss out. Who doesn't like 30 hrs of OT in their paycheck?
Driving in the snow tortures me and it's getting worse as I get older and I swore my next vehicle will have AWD or 4WD. I drove dh's truck in 18" a few years ago and never slid even a little bit. I was amazed. Tore through the snow like a hot knife through butter.
So putting $ into savings is very appealing but so it the idea of not stressing about driving in snow.
I'm torn. I will go read more Mr. Money Mustache. He is good for keeping my spending in check.
This part about buying stuff to make you happy is spot on!
"You may recall me cautioning you in
this long-ago MMM Classic, to avoid buying yourself fancy sh*t, because the thrill of every new life upgrade – whether it is a nicer dishwasher or a faster Mercedes – always wears off, and your overall life happiness
returns to exactly where it was. It’s quite an un-intuitive result, but if you watch yourself over time, you will notice it is uncannily accurate."
copied from this:
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2018/04/10/hacking-hedonic-adaptation/
Although in this instance, I think my "Happiness Bump" might go back up every snow day.