Money matters...

Keith came into work with me this morning as Mum and Dad were taking today off rather than Wednesday. I was keeping my fingers crossed we wouldn't be really busy as I'd made an appointment to test drive the Audi A1 at 11am. Luckily, although a few people were in, most of them had just come to play rather than eat as well, so Keith and I slunk off into the gloomy morning.

We had Keith's car with us as we were using this in part exchange for the new car. Keith does hardly any miles in his car (3000, I think, last year) and he pays through the nose for road tax and petrol for it. The idea was to keep my lovely black Passat for him to use and have the new Audi which is exempt from road tax (the emissions are really low) and great for fuel consumption. Both cars are nearly ten years old and I felt it was time to have a change and hopefully save some money as well! I've been doing my research into this since August and I was determined to get it right this time!

For some reason, Keith was in a really grumpy mood and left me to deal with the salesman, Craig, who went off to look at his car. We then went for a little drive in it and then it was back to the showroom and my turn to take out the Audi. I'd chosen the 1.6 diesel so off we went and I was very impressed with how smooth and zippy it was. My worries about the smaller engine were put to rest and although I wasn't out in it for very long I liked it...a lot!

After the test drive came the bit I don't like...the haggling. They came up with a price for Keith's car that he wasn't entirely happy with (what a surprise!) and then we ran into problems because I wanted to add foglights to the front of the car. The model I wanted didn't have them as standard and to have the car ordered from the factory would mean I'd have to wait until next March, by which time Keith's car would have lost even more value. They refused to guarantee the same price for Keith's car next year so we were on the point of going and having a long hard think about everything when they came up with a plan. They needed to get their figures in for November and they had a black A1 at another dealership. If I was happy to have the foglights "retro-fitted" they could give us some more for Keith's car and then we'd be all happy!

They asked us to come back later in the day to sign the order and pay a deposit and then we scuttled off back to work, much later than I'd anticipated! After trying to get as much done as I could we picked Mikey up from school as he needed some football or rugby shoes with studs in them. We went off to Brantano's where I noticed his school shoes were in pretty bad shape...after three months! I bought a new pair for him then we went off to JJB Sports to get him his football shoes before driving in the heavy rush hour traffic back to the dealership.

Back in the showroom we were told that the Business Manager wanted to just go through a "range of options" before we signed the order form and Keith immediately told the salesman that we had no intention of buying paint protection or special insurance or anything else that cost an arm and a leg. Craig went off with his tail between his legs and then we were escorted up to the offices where I felt a twinge of alarm! This was serious now! The Business Manager was fine, though, and a fellow Newcastle United supporter and he didn't try and sell us anything, just gave me some leaflets on the options available which was fine. We paid the deposit, I signed my life away and that was it! Hopefully the car should be ready within the next couple of weeks.

By now it was pretty late so we decided to have dinner out, to celebrate, and we went off to the Han Chinese restaurant in Market Harborough for a lovely, relaxed dinner with the children. For once, they didn't argue or bicker and we had a wonderful time!