Er, I might be buying a car this week. It's something that Whitney and I have sort of talked about one day getting around to considering for a while, and I've been encouraged to finally get a licence instead of continually relying on the way that Zipcar inexplicably allow me to just drive in the knowledge that I held one in a country that drove on the other side of the road, but I always thought it would be something that would get pushed off indefinitely. This afternoon, though, our neighbour came round to tell us about the plans she had for moving out, and casually offered us her car for "$500 or less".

So... I'm not sure what we should do, now. The decision would have to be made fairly quickly because she moves on Friday, though once bought, the car can freely just sit in our off-road parking space until such time as we're ready to use it. I don't know how the whole process really works in America, but I've sent an email off to the man who does our home insurance to ask what the monthly payment might be likely to be, and he should be able to give me some idea of what I'll need. I hope that I'll get time this week to test drive it and get it looked at - it's a roughly-1985 Pontiac 6000 LE (whatever that is), she says it's been good to her and she's taken it to be checked every six months, and it seems to have worked all right during the two months we've been living next to her, at least.

At the moment, hiring a Zipcar for a full day costs us about $100. So the way I see it, if it goes about five round-trip journeys of decent length before the engine jumps out and all four wheels fall off, then it's already paid for itself - and getting an incentive to finally get a licence will be welcome, as would the ability to go beyond ten minutes' walk away without a ton of planning. It might even replace the bus and train to work if I can get unterrified of driving among people from Boston. And if it doesn't work out, we can sell it on to a junkheap and probably break about even.

Is this a remotely good idea?

Edit: She's actually decided not to sell it after all, so all of this turned out to be a bit pointless - however, thanks for everyone's thoughts, and it was clear that this made us consider it, so that tells us a lot...