Practical Questions [orichalcum]

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1. Neither

cerebralpaladin nor I have ever actually bought a car. If one were planning on getting a used car (in the Bay Area), where the priorities were safety, reliability, reasonable gas efficiency, and a size large enough for 2 adults, 1-2 children, and a golden retriever, what would you suggest and approximately how much would one expect to pay?

2. I know the rental market in the Bay area (specifically the Peninsula) is pretty rapid. If we are hoping to move into a place August 1st or thereabouts, should we expect to look for a place 6 weeks/4 weeks/2 weeks/1 week in advance?

3. How short should I cut my hair today?

Music:: Like a Virgin

location: Home

Mood::

curious

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There are 37 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

I'll sell you my Accord if we move away :)

Though TWO kids and a dog and two adults would be hard pressed to feel comfortable in anything short of a minivan or a small SUV, I think.

Like the hybrid Toyota Highlander?

One kid and one dog and two grownups would fit quite nicely in a hybrid camry, but I'm biased. (About $33K if you can get a good deal.)

Priuses are cheaper (probably get for $25-30K) but are significantly smaller, though they have way better mileage.

Chris's Accord is in great shape, by the way.

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Look at the smaller hondas, toyotas, and scions. Use cars.com to browse used cars for sale by zip code, they list things at dealerships and I think also some private listings.

I believe the Toyota Echo, the Toyota Yaris, the Scion Xa, and the Honda Fit will be too small for your needs, at least once you have kid #2. I think you can make it work with the Honda Civic and the Toyota Corolla, but you should drive both and see how you feel about them because you may feel like you will need more space. The next sizes up in their vehicle lines are the Honda Accord and the Toyota Camry-- I have not driven a modern Accord but the modern Camry is a few inches wider than the Corolla and has a very soft, floaty, drives-like-a-boat suspension that I dislike. Also, once you get into the Accord/Camry size vehicles the efficiency isn't as high as you might like.

You could also look at the Scion xB, which has a lot of room, but if you hate the boxy look that's that, and many people do hate it.

You'll need to drive the Prius to decide whether you a) think you can fit 2 kids and one golden in it, or b) want it enough to get one until you need a larger vehicle. I don't know anything about the other hybrids, but I can hook you up with an experienced Prius owner in San Luis Obispo if you need tips.

Use edmunds.com for detailed reviews and ratings of cars. Buy a Consumer Reports online subscription for their used car rating data, or borrow someone else's login if you can. I would read up on the models above, and then get Edmunds to tell you what other cars are in the same classes, so that you can get an idea about whether you want to look at any other makes of car-- I'm a pretty fierce Honda/Toyota/Scion partisan because I believe Toyota engineers their cars to last 10 years with no trouble, and I think Honda does too but I'm told they engineer them closer to the part tolerances. But don't take my word for it, read Consumer Reports.

Once you've read those sources, you'll know how much to expect to pay-- Edmunds has articles that give up the dirt about how car sales really work.

I have a Honda civic. It is just barely big enough for two people + two dogs. It _might_ do for one kid+ one dog, but no way is it big enough for two kids and a (large, active) dog in the back seat. The new Accords are gorgeous and large and comfy (at least the souped up version my dad has) but they are pricier and have worse mileage.

I think it really depends on what you are doing with it. If it is to be a commuting car that needs to occasionally have you all stuffed into it then I would go for mileage and live with a car that is slightly too small. If you will both be commuting either extremely short distances or by public transit (which I am guessing/hoping is the case), then I would go for a Subaru Forester/Honda CRV/Toyota ??? (forgot the name of their small SUV). These get reasonable (not great) mileage, and can haul a ridiculous amount of volume while still being parallel-park-able and the like. I have a Subaru Forester that is 9+ years old and it is a dream. The amount it has saved us in being able to haul stuff for small moves and furniture purchases has been really worth it. I hate my Civic, which has had minor maintenance issues from day 1.

I've never bought a used car because every time I try to I find that the amount saved buying used isn't worth the risks to me. YMMV. Also, I have only bought a car by myself once, and it was a really stressful experience. Unless you buy via newspaper ads, you are going to encounter crazy sales people and insane pitches. It takes a certain brand of stubbornness to manage, which I don't really have.

Good luck!

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Never buy a used car from a dealer. Buy used from an individual, 2-5 years old. That's where you save the most money, and you'll avoid the sales pitches. Also, be sure to get a carfax report for the peace of mind.

I'm actually into buying cars, so if you want to call for advice I'd be happy to chat. Otherwise I echo the advice of people here - I'd look in the Toyota Rav4, Honda CR-v, Subaru Forester, and Ford Escape hybrid range for vehicles. Edmunds is your friend for guiding you through the process, and I have a consumer reports membership you can use.

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Thanks. We will probably call and ask for advice, though not this week, as it's gotten crazy.

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1. With one child, any car will do and you should probably just go for a Toyota or Honda sedan (or maybe Volvo?), hybrid if possible. With two children AND a dog, you're getting cramped in a standard sedan. Maybe a hatchback, and stash the dog in the back if a second kid comes into play? (If that's safe for the dog - I've never owned a dog.)

2. With the caveat that I don't know how representative this is of the South Bay, in Berkeley when I came out and looked prior two grad school, they were basically looking for tenants to move in within two weeks. If you're looking to live near Palo Alto and are moving in just prior to the start of the semester, then you may well be in a similar boat (since I think part of what was making the market so excessively rapid was the effect of 5,000 new Berkeley students all looking for apartments at once.) Unless your budget is very tight, I would suggest that you start looking about 4 weeks out and perhaps be prepared to pay for a week or two before you actually move out, if you find a place that's a really good fit and want to lock it in.

3. Go for the buzz-cut! You have a job! You can do anything! :)

Oh, BTW, if you've never bought a car, you may not know this: when buying used, you will want to test drive first and then, if you are at the "we think we want to buy this" stage, first take it to a mechanic you trust to give it a once-over and avoid any surprises. This is a reasonable and normal thing to do and I'd probably not buy from someone who wasn't willing to let me do it. A good mechanic should also be able to give you a sense of what he/she'd pay for the car, but other than that, unless the car market is weird in the South Bay, I would expect to pay Kelly Blue Book prices, maybe rounded down.

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Hey, can you tell us what make and model of cars you have tended to get from Zipcar, and how you felt they worked when you needed to haul both baby and dog? That'll give us some idea of your space tolerances. My college roommates hauls 2 kids around in a car the size of a Toyota Camry, but there would _not_ be room for a golden between the car seats if she was driving and her husband was on the passenger front seat. Really really not.

We have used a mix of different cars from iGo. (I am so bitter that the car sharing services in the Bay area are limited (essentially) to San Francisco and Berkeley. It fills me with wrath.) When hauling both baby and dog, we have typically used the Scions, which I don't particularly like. But that is under a regime where the dog has to be in a trunk area, not in a passenger area, to comply with car sharing service rules. Personally, I'm pretty sure we could fit Eowyn just fine in a Corolla sized car with one baby.

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I think you could, too, but you have to think about whether you're okay having to switch to a different car if you end up needing a second car seat. I agree with meepodeekin's assessments above. I have a Civic and like it a lot, but with two car seats (which probably would have to be each next to a car door as I'm not sure they'd fit side-by-side) it would be too cramped to fit a big dog in the middle.

By the way, maybe you guys can convince a local university to take on a car-sharing program as a perk for students or employees. I think the ones in our area work - they're parked on university lots. (Unfortunately that means they're parked where ACNH works, not near our home, so they're not useful for his commute.)

Oh, and we have bought used cars. I found the process stressful whether we were at a dealership or going through craigslist, but I think it would be stressful even if we were going to a new-car dealership so I think it's worth getting a used one and saving the money. The last time we bought a car we found a tiny dealership through craigslist where the owner didn't put any pressure on us and said that if there was a problem with the car we should bring it back and he'd check it out. That's where we ended up buying our car. This was after following several leads through craigslist and discovering that people often failed to comment on major flaws in the car. Yes, we paid more than some of the listings we saw, but we found that if it looked too good to be true, it always was. Be careful and good luck.

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I suspect that, given that you'll want efficiency while you can have it, you will want to buy a car big enough for your current family size, and worry about the upgrade when you know kid #2 is incoming. That way you'll get a few years of not having to drive a boat!

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I feel your car-sharing pain, but the problem is that the Peninsula is basically the burbs; there's nowhere you could put a car-share that enough people with no car could reasonably get to it to make the endeavor worthwhile.

One of the interesting things about City Carshare in Berkeley is that some of its locations are just people's driveways.

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There are no car sharing services in Palo Alto, but you should know that Enterprise has (or at least used to have) an hourly rental service on the Stanford campus. It's not quite the same thing, but would do in a pinch.

Palo Alto is also remarkably walkable if you stay near downtown - there is even a train directly to San Francisco.

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The problem is that it will be very difficult for us to afford living in Palo Alto itself. Stanford provides a free commuter rail pass for employees, so current hope/plan is to live near enough to a station that I can take the train to work, but probably in the towns between SF and Palo Alto.

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Re: Your hair, do you still want to be able to put it up easily? If so, I wouldn't get it shorter than shoulder-length.

Cars: (1) Stanford has a couple of zipCars available for use, though I don't know what the terms are like. (2) We know a good reputable dealer that we've bought used cars from in the past that we can refer you to if you like. (You will need to put on your bargaining hat, of course. edmunds.com is a good site to get an idea of what to pay.)

Housing: Four weeks should be fine, though as noted previously I have a poor sense for the rental market.

Baby: Babies? I take it you're thinking seriously of starting #2? :)

Actually, Enterprise looks like it's the better deal (Stanford location only)
Enterprise rates (PDF)
Zipcar rates (webpage)

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I'm glad Zipcar has a presence there now!

(I guess I need to realize all my car-sharing expertise is now 2 years out of date...)

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I love my Subaru Outback, and both the Outback and the Forester get decent (not great, but 24-28 mpg) mileage. They are terrific beater cars, can take anything you hand out and run forever. Handling in snow won't be an issue for you, but they do well in mud and foul weather of all kinds. Highly recommended. They'll easily fit 2 kids and dog, but my Outback parks like a compact, because it's not any wider than a civic or Prius. A little longer, but narrow.

Also, Viking-Cat fits nicely and is comfortable in one, which means CP will be too.

I knew there was something I was forgetting! The Outback and Forester are sweet! You won't need the AWD around town but for going skiing it could be handy!

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I don't think I have terms strong enough to describe my love for my Forester. And my in-laws have an Outback they love, as does my sister in law, who routinely (i.e. at least 5 times per year) drives it to Utah and back. Subarus are significantly pricier than (the smaller) hondas and toyotas, and we couldn't afford one when we needed to actually pay for our second car. But I highly recommend them if you can afford one.

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It's true - the tall-guy test is also important.

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Yeah, I'd have to say that the Outback or the Forrester would be my call. You could probably go with the Audi A3 or any sort of small SUV/station wagon, but the Subarus seem to be a particularly good combination of price and practicality. I've never owned a dog, but I can't imagine combining a child seat and a golden retriever in the back seat is a good idea.

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A disturbing percentage of the cars in Seattle are Outbacks or Legacys (the plain ol' wagon version). Once I started recognizing them, I saw them everywhere. They're apparently perfect for driving out into the country, on dirt roads, to go camping or hiking or suchlike.

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We've got a Forester, and the two car seats fit just fine now. When we had a little one in a bucket, he was behind the driver's seat (my 3 year old liked the passenger side and didn't want to switch) and my husband (who is 6'1") could *not* slide the seat back far enough to drive the car comfortably (although I'm betting he could have been okay in the passenger seat). That's not a problem now that both boys are facing forward, although I can already see that leg room will be an issue in the back seat when the front seats are back far enough for my husband. I've had the car for 4 years and put 70000 miles on it, and we love it. The AWD has literally made it possible for me to get home (but I doubt you'll have the snow issues we have in Boston). And you can get a nice rubber liner for the cargo bed that would be perfect for transporting a dog.

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I highly recommend Hondas -- they pretty much run forever. I don't know when the mileage/efficiency issues with Accords cited above come into play, but I've been very happy with my 2005 Accord; any Honda made after 2000 will have the LATCH system for car seats.

Do look up blue book prices, so you have a rough idea, and do feel free to get up and walk away from a salesperson at any time if that person is exerting undue pressure on you. I've had some bad experiences with salesmen who expected me not to notice when they dodged my questions, condescended to me, or gave me song-and-dance routines about how I had to take the car RIGHT THAT MINUTE or lose a deal, so it's worth finding a dealership/salesperson you're comfortable with. Ask around and see if anyone local has recommendations -- I've now bought two cars from a dealership not particularly close to me geographically because a friend raved about how reliable and trustworthy they were, and he was right.

It sucks to have to say this, but: You probably don't want to go car-shopping by yourself, unless you've found a really good salesperson. The gender bias is still hideous. Unbelievable in this day and age, I know, but it's true.

Yeah, my mom's car, which I still occasionally think of as "the nice new car", is an Accord. A Model Year 1989 Accord.

Yeah.

Of course, it probably only has roughly 120,000 miles on it, if that, but still. There are kids in college younger than that car.

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For what it's worth, we're going to be out of town the second half of July. I don't think we can have a house-guest who is a dog, but if one or both of you wanted to come out (sans dog) and do some househunting and stay here for free and have unlimited use of a car/kitchen/etc., so long as you feed and water and play with the cats, water 2 plants, and bring in mail, that could work out great for everyone :).

Craigslist should give you an idea of housing prices. I'm not sure how fast it is to find a place nowadays.

No idea about the hair. It's lovely and thick so I'd say don't cut it all off, but that's my bias.

Thanks! It looks like it will just be me coming out for house-hunting, actually, to save expenses, and I'd be delighted to house-sit in exchange for crash space if that timing works out.

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Cool, that could work out great. By the way, stuff I've forgotten:
--They may allow dogs in our complex--not for us because of our lease, but others.
--Our rent has gone up a lot every year but it's in part because we keep not doing 1 year leases. It's a pretty well located, well maintained complex, and pretty affordable too. (I am not saying this because we'd get a bonus if you moved in, though it'd be AWESOME if you were in the complex).
--Something more important that you probably/may already know: buy your car after you get to CA. If you buy it right before, CA levies CA taxes on it *anyway*. Big pain, since cars are often cheaper outside the state.

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Yeah, we'd already heard that about the car -and will definitely check out your complex if there's a place open.

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I'd say cut ALL the hair off and go short, but my bias on the subject is well known.

I've always been terrified given the curls that if I went really short I'd wind up as Little Orphan Annie.

I went back to just above shoulders - not as short as just post-wedding, which I don't remember if you saw, but lighter and easier for the summer, and very layered.

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Sounds nice. In spite of my bias towards short hair, I refrained from advising it to you. If your hair were the length of mine, it would be a fro. I'm wanting to see a pic now, but otherwise I guess I'll see it in July.

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I've thought more Keri Russell with the short do kind of thing. Curly, but not bowl shaped. http://www.imdb.com/media/rm2860358400/nm0005392

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That could look cute, but I'd have to dye it like every two weeks...

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