So! Two local car dealers suffered extensive damage to their outdoor inventory. And there was a feeding frenzy over the next few days as people smelled deals and sought them out. I was slow to move, however, because I was able to get my car dried out and get the glass replaced with money left over from the insurance settlement — I bought the totaled car back, and left the body as it was. Five months later I noticed that one of the dealers still had a few hail damaged cars; and the prices were low! I watched as they went even lower! In February 2007 I bought a new (but hail damaged) car for 40% off the sticker price. This car was somewhat bigger than I might have considered otherwise, but it had a suite of safety features that was very important to me (side air bags, abs, high gov’t rating, etc). I sold my old car privately and never looked back.

So it has obvious damage, but to me those dings are valuable. The car is in every way the same as others except for the superficial body damage. And except for the thousands of dollars I didn’t have to pay.

Also, I don’t know much about minivans, but I can’t say enough nice things about Toyota, Subaru, and Honda. And my sister bought a Hyundai Santa Fe that she adores because it’s been very low-maintenance and a pleasure to drive.

BUT, don’t expect great mileage from any recent model minivan.

Newest models of full-sized minivans are all pretty much rated @17 city.

Right now, most Western economies face serious threats from under-population (though the United States, due to a decent birth rate and healthy immigration is in less danger than most). Many countries, like Italy, are in very real danger of having every worker supporting his own personal retiree in the next thirty years or so.

I think there’s also an awful lot of zero-sum thinking from those who follow the Zero Population Growth ideology. They seem to think that people are liabilities (more consumers), and never think of them as assets (more producers). By the way, I am certain that there is some optimal population size for the planet, but I have seen absolutely zero evidence, just assumptions, that we are at or even close to that number. Moreover, the number clearly must be constantly changing with each technological advance and advances in production, distribution, infrastructure, etc.

Never fear, though, if the doomsayers are right and we eventually do overpopulate the planet, you can be certain we’ll know it almost instantly since it’s a self-correcting problem. (This is why I have to sigh when I’m told that we have already overpopulated the planet. If that were true, the global population would be declining, not rising.)

I’m a big Subaru fan — in the past 14 years I’ve owned two, both purchased used, and I’ll keep the 2nd one until it’s 10 years old just as I did the first (which I then passed along to my brother, who still drives it). But I don’t like their 7-seater, and am thinking more and more about gas mileage/fuel consumption.

As far as kids, it’s a personal decision. I’m another one who doesn’t really get why people still have large families. I understand the emotional pull there and why it might be desired, but given how overpopulated we’re becoming as a country and as a planet, I keep hoping that people will make different choices. I’m probably tilting at windmills.

I found the “Car Buyer’s and Leaser’s Negotiating Bible” (http://www.fightingchance.com/book.php?js=y) to be invaluable in navigating the market. We ended up going new and using the fax-attack method were able to get the car far below the FMV price listed on Edmunds.com.

Good luck!

excellent choice. My girlfriend has one and it is just great and a much better alternative to a minivan. I also had one for a 2 week rental and it was great for hauling people around

recommend the costco auto buying program as well. Gets you really close to invoice price in 5 seconds on more desirable vehicles

beware of false economies with used hondas and toyotas. Minimal depreciation and high resale value mean that you are often better off working a good deal on a new one then settling on a slightly used one. When I bought the difference between a 3 year old 35-40k mile used model and the new improved model was about $3-4k. Being able to pick extra safety options, customize everything, extra warranty, have a more fuel efficient vehicle, and get an extra 3+ years out of it(based on mileage) was easily worth the small premium.

Michel, other than college expenses (and I am firmly of the opinion that parents are not morally obligated to provide for those, though of course I applaud those parents who do), the marginal cost of an additional child is not, in my admittedly inexperienced opinion, all that great (especially if you have a stay-at-home parent and can avoid daycare costs). But you shouldn’t listen to me – I don’t have any children yet and no real opinion on what the optimal family size actually is. Most very large families I have known have had a stay-at-home parent, so it can’t necessarily be a choice between having a large family or spending more time with them, though this may very well be the case for some families. (Income of the principal breadwinner probably being the deciding factor.) The time of the parents might be stretched thin by the number of children, but I am not at all convinced that this isn’t compensated for by the presence of siblings. I have two older brothers, ten and eleven years older than I am, and I found their guidance quite valuable when an unfortunate tragedy robbed me of my father at a young age. I would have found their guidance even more valuable had I listened to it more often.

Anyway, there tend to be two types of people who really want large families – people who grew up in large families and loved it and people who grew up in small families and hated it. (I mentioned my wife wanting more than two since she came from a fairly lonely two-child household. Her brother has expressed a desire to have nine or ten children, though I doubt they’ll follow through.) My own opinion is there probably is a “correct” answer to optimal family size, but I don’t presume to know what it is.

I am going to bet that one of these two situations describes you. Either 1) you had at most one sibling and a perfectly happy childhood (most likely) or 2) you come from a large family which was very unstructured and disorganized and so you didn’t have a happy childhood. Thoughts on how many children one should have seem to be heavily influenced by one’s own childhood. (Maybe you’re the rare exception, though.) For example, my wife was one of two children (she had a younger brother) and she rarely interacted with her brother much. As a consequence, her childhood was fairly lonely. She thinks two children is probably too few. I, on the other hand, was the fourth of four children and, due to circumstances largely out of my parents’ control, had a fairly chaotic and disorganized childhood. I think four children is probably too many. I’ve met people who had very happy childhoods with as many as twelve siblings. I’ve met people with very happy childhoods who were only children. I’ve also met people who had unhappy childhoods from both small and large families. However, almost everybody thinks their family size had a significant effect on the happiness of their childhood. And it’s even possible that all of them are right.

Anyway, the reason why you might have more children is to benefit the children you already have. If you have a strong belief that larger families are happier families for the children (and there is reason to think this – my own fairly large family, while chaotic, was rarely boring or lonely), then you will probably favor having a larger family yourself. However, as Barry said, the benefits are not for yourself, but for your children. Siblings give them a support network both while growing up and into adulthood which will outlive you and your spouse. Now that I no longer live with them, I am quite pleased that I have three older siblings. Also, my wife might take issue with the idea that the world wouldn’t miss me (the fourth of four) had I never been born, though in a literal sense, you are of course right, since the world wouldn’t know what it was missing.