Tips For Buying A Vehicle

Since my family and I moved to Portugal and started from scratch, we had to find a house, friends, and of course we had to get a car to get around.

We had quite a few options with a 2013 and 2018 Peugeot looking promising, a family BMW series 1 which I was quite interested in, and we also had the option of a 2017 Volkswagen. We were quite intrigued by the Volkswagen as it was a type of car both of my parents were used to driving as our last car in Canada was also a Volkswagen Tiguan with a glorious moon roof. 

After a few months of looking with many different options we chose the family BMW Series 1 on lease for two years.

3 Reasons We Chose a Family BMW Series 1

1. I can be really persuasive and I'm a little bit of a car person. So when I realized that my favourite kind of car, a BMW, was a promising option I really wanted it. 

One of the main reasons why I like BMWs so much is because the BMW was the first car I remember riding in. For me that was like my family car growing up. I also love sporty cars and the pickup is just fantastic in a BMW!

I also thought that it would be nice if our first forever car here in Portugal would be a type of car we all liked a lot. 

Plus when the BMW is also your mom's favuorite kind of car, the odds of getting a BMW go significantly up!

2. Since we had not been to Portugal in the past, coming here was very much an adventure and trial to see if we would want to move our life here and stay long term. We did not want to spend big money on a car and then decide we would want to leave a year or two later. So a lease for only 2 years seemed like a decent amount of time so we could tell if we would want to stay for the long term here in Portugal.

3. We wanted a simple, family car with good trunk space, good speakers, nice seats, and just an all round good family car. 

Plus since we had seen that BMW cars are popular family cars are popular with other families in Portugal.

The BMW has big comfy seats and it also has a nice bit of storage considering that the BMW series 1 is not a very big family car. 

Another thing we all liked about this Beamer was the speakers. Since we normally listen to music when we go somewhere it was important to all of us that the speakers were pretty decent. 

Logistics

When making the decision of which car we were going to buy we had to think a lot about the math because we had a lot of different prices and a few different cars we were interested in.

It was a complicated process because of all the different factors like, how old the car is, the price, how long we would want to stay here, the resale value, and other things. We did the math just from a normal calculator but what would have been really helpful is something I found recently that could have really helped us when we were doing all the nitty gritty calculations.

This is a good tool when you want to do some calculations on getting a car to help you find out how much of a car payment you can afford. https://www.carpaymentcalculator.net/

Final Thoughts

All in all I love my new beamer and tell me down below what kind of cars you drive and if you are thinking of buying a new car.

If you are moving to Portugal and want to know more about where we got our car check out the link here.

And until the next time 

Ate Logo!