Just get another minivan. There is ZERO practical advantage in buying an SUV….ZERO…..doing so is simply done because you don’t want another minivan. It is an emotional decision.
SUV’s are extremely popular because we tend to be emotional, not practical, car buyers. Demand for SUVs are very high right now.
This means SUVs vs minivan tend to be higher priced and offer fewer reasons for a dealer to discount. Also besides paying more on the onset, compared to minivans, SUVs:
* tend to depreciate faster
* have higher insurance rates
* have higher maintenance costs
(waiting for someone to come in with the one-day-every-3-year- snow storm story that makes SUVs far superior).
Disclosure: we only have one kid, so we did ended up going with a compact SUV for our family. From a practical standpoint, it does fit better in our 2-stall garage and secondly, we simply don’t need that much room. That said, I would have gone with a comparable sized sedan and gotten the same amount of room and saved a couple thousand dollars, but I got vetoed from the wife because “she likes to sit up higher”. (again…emotional reasoning….but at some point a guy has to simply cut his losses and live to fight another day.)
Also, congrats on paying cash for your cars! I feel pretty certain had we financed our last purchase, we would have gone with the much performed Nissan Murano but because we’d saved for a car purchase and were intent on writing a check (painful!) , we ended up with the Nissan Rogue and in the end saved $10K plus.
