My "new" car

After what seems like a year of searching/phoning dealership websites and craigslist ads, Jillian and I found the car that will be replacing my Chevy Silverado. All part of the save money to buy a house campaign. I know buying a car doesn't sound like a good way to start saving, but some times you have to spend money to save it.
Here's the vehicle itself: (you can see Jillian's Highlander in the back. Matching color is coincidence)

 So this may have taken much less time if I were given a budget and left to my own devices, but I can assure you that I wouldn't have ended up with this nice of a vehicle. I would have likely purchased the 2003 BMW 5 series I saw on craigslist on day number 4 of our search. Instead, we got a 2011 Toyota Camry SE for $3k under KBB value.
I credit half of this gem to the stubborn persistence of my wife and the other half to timing and luck. Jillian was dead set on getting a Toyota Camry with the acceptable exceptions being Honda Accords or Lexus and Accura brand midsize 4 door sedans... which are basically camrys and accords... so I had two options really. Trust me, this was a fight I wasn't going to win... but I fought it multiple times when I saw other nice cars that I liked.
How we ended up with this vehicle was a little bit surprising. We had just increased our budget in an attempt to get something a little newer than the vehicles we had been seeing in our price range. Something that also had closer to 80K miles instead of 100k. We called around constantly and haggled with dealers. This Camry however was a real nice one listed at Mercedes Benz of Mobile, and Jillian wanted it BAD. It was listed over our budget but she was set on getting them down to our cash price 'out the door'.
The timing was right for our bargaining as it was the end of both the month and the quarter and we were pretty sure there would be some sales person scrambling to make a quota benchmark for either or both. Turns out the sales person Jillian was talking with also happened to be a neighbor. (I was speaking with a guy named John who had been a weatherman on some Caribbean island for ten years before moving to Mobile) After some emailing back and forth about the neighborhood, our neighbor Peter said, "Just come in tomorrow morning". We weren't sure how to take that but decided it was worth a shot.
We got there bright and early at 9am with the intention to stick to our guns about the price and even had a backup vehicle to look at down the street at Koby Subaru. When we pulled up, there were sales people stalking the lot. They looked like vulchers (My dad refers to them as "lot lizards" from his days working the accounting department at Chris Myers. ). We took one step out of our car and three people welcomed us. To take the lead, a guy said, "You must be Mr. McKelroy. Hi, I'm John". At first I thought, 'oh great, there goes the opportunity for the deal with our neighbor Peter', but he explained that they were both going to be helping us with the car. Before we even made it into the building they had keys out to us for a test drive.
We took the car out, hit the interstate to check the cars handling and how smooth it changed gears then drove it around my house in west mobile before stopping on a low traffic side street to check under the hood and such. It was pretty much a flawless vehicle. A few exterior scuffs, some seat wear and a couple minor scratches on the driver window tint. So with the all-clear we drove back to the dealership with every intention of sticking to our budget and being willing to walk away.
Surprisingly, we weren't met with the aggressive sales tactics we were expecting. We walked in the door. John met us and said "ok, we're going to sell you that car. Peter is getting the paperwork together for you". To that we both were thinking, "yeah, you should probably hold your horses on that one", but as we were sitting there with Peter he started asking for my drivers license and personal info I stopped him and said, "Just so we're clear, is this car going to be $12,500 out of the door like we told you we could spend?". He said, "Yep, unless that's a problem". "Nope". While he was writing stuff down, Jillian and I both looked at each other like that was easy... maybe too easy.
It took until they were counting our cash to realize that there were no strings attached. I guess there was a neighborly discount after all. Not to say they didn't make a profit. I'm sure whoever traded in that Camry got completely low-balled; but it was a win for us. No other dealership was willing to drop their price as much they did. Not even on the last weekend day of the quarter... trust me, we called around until the last hour.
Overall I'm thrilled. Now to complete our plans I have the small task of selling a truck... and then concentrating my efforts on my house, which is nearing a year on the market.

Travel Bug Strikes Again

Roughly three months ago, I started getting antsy again about needing to travel. It happens from time to time. I'll hop on the computer and just start looking at the cost of flights; not to anywhere in particular. I just want to see what the cost would be to go somewhere that's not in Alabama... or this country. The problem with these yearnings for adventure in far off places is that it doesn't stop until I've gone somewhere new.
Well, it's been three months and the urges haven't subsided. The problem is, however, that the wife and I are in super saver mode for a down-payment on a new home and there's only one exception: buying a car to replace my truck and get rid of my monthly truck payments. So, I thought that if I went to extremes, I could distract myself from not actually traveling.
In my mind, I thought that some advanced planning would do me some good. I purchased a couple travel books, but that didn't work. I then had the brilliant idea of researching the best ways to save money on travel and it hit me. Apart from being Delta skymiles members, we don't take advantage of any travel membership perks. It was right after this that I decided to join every single airline and hotel membership rewards program that I could find and I made a folder to compile all the membership numbers. Feeling like that wasn't enough, I started looking into ways to get points without actually traveling.
Turns out, you can earn a bunch of points by just doing your normal shopping online. Almost all airline and hotel membership programs have an online mall. Not something like it's own storefront, but they're basically just links to websites/companies you already use. You just get points for using their link to get to those websites and making purchases. Anyway. I'm straying from the point of this story.

Not satisfied, I decided that the best way to plan for future trips was by getting a credit card that earned me free hotel stays (and Jillian decided to do the same for flights). After looking around for a bit, I decided to get a Hilton Amex. Mainly because there's no annual fee, and secondly because Jillian usually stays at Hilton locations for her dental conferences. Huge win, because I get tons of free points on hotel rooms that she's reimbursed through work for. Just getting the card and using it for a couple months has already earned me a free room for a night. So far, Jillian has also earned ... about the equivalent of a taxi across the tarmac in Delta Amex skymiles.
Hopefully, after a few years we'll be able to pull off a free trip. We'll see.