Third Biggest Investment in My Life
About two weeks ago, I did my third biggest investment in my life. What is that? A car. Finally… for the first time in my life, I have a car (after more than 30 years living in this "complicated" world). May be you are asking, what are the first and second biggest investment in our life? Some people say their first biggest investment is house. Some others say kid (or kids) is their biggest investment; and house is the second one. For me, car is not really an investment because the value is deprecating as time goes.
So what is my experience buying my first car? It was a very long journey actually…. I have to take 5 times driving license within 5 months. I was very stressed at that time because I failed my driving test several times. Thanks God… I got my Canadian driving license on February 20, 2006.
After I got my driving license, another problem came when buying a car. I am still new in Canada; it is not that easy to apply for financing. They always ask these questions, "Who are you?", "How long have you been here?", "Do you have a permanent job?", etc. It is quite understandable because so many Canadians apply for financing, then later on they cannot pay their monthly bill. There are some people who apply for financing and then left the country. Finally I decided to pay my first car in cash…. :( Fortunately, I bought a used car, not a new car. I couldn’t imagine if I buy a new car.
The next thing is warranty and insurance. The car dealer tried to sell extended warranty and other things, like alarm, "cheap" oil-change program, etc. Fortunately, he could not convince me to buy those things. The insurance company also tried to sell many different policies. The insurance people tried to scare me… this and that might happen and blah, blah, blah…. He knows that I am a new comer in Canada, so he may think, "Aha… stupid person".
Now, what is my experience driving my first car? Honestly, I don’t really like driving. We hear accidents happen everyday in Greater Vancouver. It scares me. About three weeks ago, there was an accident near my office. Five cars were involved in the accident and two people were killed. The interesting thing, the maximum limit in that area is 50 km/h only! Unfortunately, we need to have a car in Canada; otherwise life will be very difficult. Many places are not pedestrian friendly and the public transportation is so bad. This one thing I don’t like about Canada.
