Car talk...

I have a problem with my truck. It works perfectly fine.

See, I'm a bit of a car nut. When I was a little kid, I played with matchbox cars all the time, could pretty much identify any car on the road, read those free used-car listing magazines they have at the grocery store, and dreamed of what kind of car I would own when I got a license and money.

Not much has changed. As soon as I've bought a new vehicle, I'm already thinking about what the next one will be. But I'm also frugal, and so I have been pretty practical about buying cars. It's also helped that I've been pretty broke - I bought my truck right after I bought my house, so I didn't have much to spend, and bought pretty much the cheapest one that met my needs.

I've had the truck for a little over three years. Aside from some random transmission clunks, it's been solid, and it has less than 50k on it. It's paid off. But as usual, I'm thinking about what the next thing I buy will be.. and when.

The problem is, for the first time in my life, I actually have enough money that I could buy something pretty nice, and pay cash for it.

The vehicle that's caught my eye of late is the Lincoln Navigator. I can get a clean used one with less than 30k on the clock for a little over $30k, and my trade is worth around $12k. I'd love to have leather seats, some more space in the back for hamfests and auctions, climate control, and the ability to refer to "the Navi".

Of course, financially it's a horrible idea. I'm at the sweet spot for my truck - it's taken the biggest of the depreciation hit, but still has a lot of life left in it, and is paid off. The best thing would be to keep it for another 3 years or so, by which time it will be 6 years old and have 90k or so miles on it.

So I'm torn between the car nut and the cheapskate. The deal I've made with myself is that I won't do anything until at least the summer. The goal is to save as much money as I can until then and then make a decision. I'm not sure I could bring myself to drop 5 figures on something I don't need - but if I was going to, it would be on this.