Change in Plans

Bear with me or skip this entry; I’m really just thinking on the screen.

Well, today was mostly spent vehicle-shopping. I had priced out the specific truck I would buy, in an ideal world, and found a very, very similarly equipped model, nearby, so I woke up this morning with the intent of going and getting it. Thanks in large part to sticker-shock moment at the local credit union, I realized just how much of a payment I was really looking at…

In the perfect world and with a post-law-school salary, I would probably buy the very truck I was looking at, today. In the real world, though, I think it’s just too much. My greatest fear related to law school is not the workload or the debt, in and of itself; it’s getting myself into a debt-related bind and forcing myself into BIGLaw. I absolutely do not want to become an NYC cloned suit; if I work for a firm, post-graduation, before getting an academic post, I hope it will be a small or medium size firm, not necessarily at the firm of the highest bidder.

So, I think I might be back to the MINI Cooper S. That and an F-150 Lariat are radically different vehicles, of course, but they both fit my principal criteria of (1) safety, (2) reliability, and (3) no “rip-offosity.” That is, my principal concerns are surviving any crashes, should I be so unlucky, avoiding major repairs through at least the next 4 years, and not feeling I got robbed, each time I sit down. The F-150 and the MINI are among the few vehicles that I feel really satisfy all three conditions, so it’s a choice of:

• Rugged, flexible/capable, gas-guzzling, and expensive (F-150)
• Fun, sporty, fuel-efficient, good for grins, and reasonably priced (MINI)
• Less rugged/flexible and less fun/sporty than either of the above, but a tad lower in price (various other vehicles)

If I can’t buy a serious people-/stuff-hauler, I might as well buy something fun. I ruled out most SUVs because of fuel-inefficiency and prices not that far below the F-150. I would really like the heated seats, too, which rules out a lot of vehicles, entirely (too many car makers make heated seats available only on an absurdly-priced, top-of-the-line model, so why bother?).

Anyway, we’ll see. I need to regroup and do some more research.