I can finally afford my dream car and why I choose not to

First off let me say my dream car isn’t something completely outrageous that costs six figures to purchase. Believe it or not my dream car only costs around $40,000 full loaded. That being said it’s still an expensive car for someone under 30 to be purchasing. Luckily for me I’ve had some success with a side business I started last year (I’ll write a full post about that soon) which has given me some extra income to actually purchase a 2011 Subaru Impreza WRX STI.

So why didn’t I?

Well to be honest a lot of the reason is due to a post made by Chris Guthrie who has a similar taste in cars as I do, but more importantly he also has similar long term business goals as me, although he is a few years ahead of me. Chris talks about taking the money you make from your side business and reinvesting it back into the business instead of spending it on things like the STI. The rate of return on money that’s reinvested back into the business is amazing right now and as an old co-worker once said; “a car is rolling stock.”

When will I buy my dream car?

That’s a great question that I don’t really have the answer to. I currently own a pretty rare car (1 of 2,400 ever made) which is a blast to drive and has heated seats, side mirrors and wind shield wipers. Did I mention I live in Michigan and it snows…a lot. More than likely it’ll be around 2 years or until I’m feeling comfortable enough with the side business that I can stop reinvesting so much.

What did I learn?

I learned that sometimes your “dream” anything really isn’t that hard to achieve as you think if you really try and I also learned that sometimes when you have the option to actually get your “dream” anything, it’s not always the smartest move or the best time. It’s important to take a step back from time to time and look at the big picture, it gives you a completely different perspective.

WTF is this side business?

The side business is a web based project I’ve been half heartedly working on over the past year. I say half heartedly because I would get really motivated for a month or so and then completely forget about it for another 2-3 months thus killing any progress I was making. As promised I’ll have a full post up about it soon, possibly this weekend if I get some free time while Angela, Izzy and I are in Traverse City for the holiday weekend.