Diary of a Car Shopper

Job? check.

College degree? well almost check.

New car? um... you would think that would be the easiest of the three. But let's count. It took me three years at this firm (+ the necessary education) to get into the job I wanted, college graduation will come after 4.3 years of work, and the car search started halfheartedly this fall. To be continued...

I thought I had made progress this week. I found a car I liked - make, year, color, mileage, price, features (I was mainly glad about keyless entry because I'm just too lazy to turn a key) - and I thought, maybe buying a car is not so bad after all.

So I'm acting all grown up and emailing back and forth with the salesman about price specifics and when to do a test drive and all that. 

Naturally I bring it up at work, and one of the partners - basically a car guru who has been quite helpful - takes a look. He's approving all the features when - 

"Sarah, you can't drive a manual transmission!" 

(I don't know how he ever guessed this. 

But it was a pretty safe assumption.)

I'm back to square one, maybe I'll spend another semester or two here before stumbling across  another 5 speed car.

That would have been a short test drive.