I’ve mentioned this before, but I almost never carry cash. On the rare occasion that I do have cash on my person something always comes up that I need to spend the cash and then I’m once again in the same position of not having cash.

Today I didn’t have cash. And the one thing a person in a city really needs cash for is parking. And I did a lot of parking today. You can see where I’m going with this, right?

Actually, as The Son and I dashed out the door to pick up The Daughter and her classmates before dashing off to get The Son to practice, he remember to ask if I had cash. No, I’d forgotten to raid the quarter dish on the dresser. So I unlocked the door and ran back into the house to grab a handful of quarters.

We picked up the girls and one of The Son’s teammates who also needed a ride, dropped the girls at a friend’s house (their practice started later in the day and they’d get a ride from another mom), and then dashed to practice. I fed the machine my quarters and for the sum of $2.00 got a receipt that granted me two hour’s worth of parking in space #55.

Two hours later, The Son’s team was done but The Daughter’s team had another hour to go so I went back to the machine and fed it another 4 quarters. In return for my $1.00, I was granted another hour’s worth of parking in space #55.

The Daughter’s practice was supposed to be over at 6:15 but naturally didn’t let out until 6:30. I hustled the kids (just my two at this point, everyone else had a ride home) out to the car and made a bee-line for home. Of course, a bee-line in this metropolis at 6:30pm is not a very fast bee-line. There was still tons of rush-hour traffic slowing things down.

We made it home by 7:10. I dashed into the house for a quick bathroom visit, then flew back out grabbing my purse and blowing a kiss to The Husband and pleading with him to look up the address of my destination on-line and call me on my cell phone to give me directions. My destination was a large local bookstore where author John Elder Robison was giving a reading from his book, “Look Me In The Eye.” The reading was scheduled to start at 7:30. Yeah, right, like there was any way I was going to make it on time.

The Husband took his sweet time but finally called just as I was approaching downtown. His directions were off but I found the store without too much trouble only to realize that — oh, yeah, hello, just where had I thought I’d park and just how did I think I was going to pay for it? This is downtown! People everywhere going out to dinner, hitting the clubs, hitting the bars, doing whatever people do downtown in the evening — I really have no clue as I’m just a suburban wife and mother with no life of my own anymore ;-).

I had two dimes in my pocket and I might have been able to dig another few pennies or other small change out of my purse.

I drove around scoping out the lots — $5.00 per night here, $8.00 after 4pm there, 1-hour meters along the streets; I don’t even know who much they cost because there wasn’t any empty spot for blocks. I drove around in a 3-block circle and on my second pass by the store I’d just about given up hope of getting myself out of this stupid, unpreparedness mess when I noticed a little Visa logo on the parking lot sign. What? Am I dreaming? Can it be true? Will my plastic save my skin and I’ll get to go to the reading after all? It was way too good to be true. But it was. I parked, hunted down the kiosk, and after two false starts, figured out how to charge $5.00 to my credit card for unlimited parking between 4pm tonight and 6am tomorrow. Risking an asthma attack, I dashed for the bookstore and made it to the reading just as Mr. Robison was being introduced.

So, Parking — $8.00, was the sum total of my expenses today and I learned a valuable lesson. Never loose faith in the power of plastic

The good bloggers of the M-Network have been talking about cars this week and invited other bloggers to join them in the discussion.

I’ve owned three new cars and let me tell you, I love new cars. Unapologetically love them.

Growing up, used resuscitated cars were the standard. My first car was an old beat-up Toyota Celica that my brother had driven before me and someone else had beat up before him. When it died, we bought a cute little used Honda Civic CVC that was eventually passed down to my mom when her Dodge Omni died. At that point I bought a used Toyota truck that had sustained hail damage. I loved that truck and eventually gave it to my youngest sister when she went off to college. She killed it on a road trip by not heeding an idiot light. The only used car I owned that didn’t last long was a little used Datsun that I bought for my younger sister. One night it was hit and totalled as it sat parked in front of the house.

I bought my first new car, a bare-bones, nothing-extra Toyota Corolla, when I was 19. Actually I leased it and, when the lease was up, I bought it. It was an ‘84 and when I drove it off the lot it had less than 100 miles on it. I bought it because I was the only one in the family gainfully employed enough to qualify for financing and able afford the $100 monthly payment. I went for the lease instead of a loan because that was the only way to get the payments low enough that I could afford them. In hindsight, I know that in the long run I paid a lot more than the purchase price of the car but live and learn.

By 1995, that Corolla had seen me through three jobs, trade school, two years of college, marriage, and two children.

On July 4, 1995, we bought a brand new Subaru Legacy wagon — a bare-bones, nothing-extra family wagon. We paid cash and drove it off the lot. It had less than 200 miles on it and I’m pretty sure I put a good 60 of them on myself in the course of my test drives. At this point, I took over the new Subaru and The Husband drove the Corolla.

He drove the Corolla for another four years. It finally gave up the ghost with 170,000+ miles on it. I’m sure it would have lasted longer had it not been for the brutal paper route I drove after The Daughter was born and the four years of gear-grinding abuse it took from The Husband (he had been driving nothing but automatics for umpteen years). When the Corolla died, I was 31 years old.

The Husband replaced the Toyota with a used car — a really dumb, unresearched impulse buy that he ended up sinking a lot of money into over the next three years. We finally gave up on that car and, in 2002, bought a used Toyota SUV.

At this point The Husband and I switched cars again — I got the new used SUV to drive and he drove the Subaru.

Just this summer we decided it was time to finally replace the Subaru. It was 12 years old and had over 220,000 miles on it. It was still running pretty well but it had a few slow leaks that we knew were going to need attention before too long. The final straw was that it was a manual transmission and my Fibromyalgia made it virtually impossible for me to drive it when necessary.

Before the Corolla and then the Legacy, The Husband had never owned a car that had managed to top 100k without needing extensive mechanical work. Now he was hooked. In the spirit of “don’t mess with sucess,” just this July we bought a brand new — you guessed it, bare-bones, nothing-extra — Subaru Impreza wagon. It had approximately 200 miles on it when we drove it off the lot. This time I knew more about buying a car. We went through Costco’s car-buying program and got a good deal on it (dealer invoice, we retained the $1,500 rebate which was applied to the loan, and a 2-year loan at 1.9% — we could have paid cash but took the low financing instead).

And that’s were we stand today. One brand new Subaru and one reliable but aging used Toyota.

And so you see, I’ve got nothing against used cars. But I love new cars.

Yup, that’s right, I love new cars. And not for the new car smell — which I happen to hate. And not for any kind of “cool” factor or status symbol. I love new cars because I can account for every mile put on them. I know that they been serviced regularly and carefully maintained. I know they’ve never been red-lined or otherwise abused. I know that they haven’t been smoked in. I know they haven’t been puked in, and if they were, it was my own kids’ puke. I know every meal that’s been eaten in them, every trip they’ve taken, every repair they’ve had. I love taking a car from “cradle to grave.”

I love new cars because I know what I’ll be driving for next 12 to 15 years.

Other articles written this week about cars include:

• Moolanomy writes about new v. used, insurance, maintenance, and hidden expenses in My Cars and My Life
• The Dough Roller tells us about a new website in Service Beacon: A Free Online Tool to Track Your Car’s Maintenance Schedule and History
• Gather Little by Little pokes fun at people like me in 5 Reasons You Should Buy a New Car
• Cash Money Life argues for trading v. selling your old car in Save Time and Money by Trading in Your Car
• Budget of destiny asks New or Old what kind of car do YOU buy?

So, what was the last car you bought? Was it new or used? Why’d you buy it? How long do you expect it to last?