A Penny Saved Becomes A Penny Spent

So, we got back from our vacation about a week and a half ago, and we're not home one hour when Dave says, "Let's go look at cars!" You can imagine where this is leading. Let me rewind.
This spring, we decided to say "goodbye" to our beloved 325 since it was starting to have (costly) problems. We pocketed the cash that we got from the sale saying that it would go to the next car. A penny (or two) saved. So, we're left with Dave's X5 and my Mini Cooper. The thing is that David insists that I have 4-wheel drive in the winter, for safety reasons. I was thinking that I'd be fine with the Mini all winter so that we wouldn't have to worry about a car payment. David insisted so I started thinking about what kind of car we "needed" and would be the most beneficial to us. I settled on a pick-up, since I hate that I can't pack dirty gardening things in any of our cars and I'm going to be having tons of garding projects to do really soon. So, back to the future...
Dave and I run out to the local Toyota dealership since that's what we decided we wanted. None of the other trucks appealed to us, based on look and maker. David had called the dealership and had spoken to a very knowledgeable individual about the trucks and so we decided to go speak to this guy. Well, we get there and ask for him and of course he's busy. He pawned us off on some poindexter type who obviously didn't know anything about the product that he was selling. I'm surprised that we didn't end up selling a truck to him!
So, we humor the guy, do a test-drive and sit down with him for a while. It's already obvious to us that we're not going to buy anything from this guy, so after a lot of telling him what options there are on the truck, etc... we leave.
I come back from work the next day and it turns out that David says that he called a dealer up in Bel Air... about 15 minutes away. So, we go up there and talk to a very knowledgeable guy. We end up not getting the truck because we wanted to check out some things first... but not before getting a price of somewhere between 27 and 28 K.
I come back from work the next day and apparently David had been a busy little bee. In his free time, he went up to another dealer and got some rock-bottom prices from them, called another dealer and got some low prices from them too. So we decide to go back to the second dealer in Bel Air.
When we got there, David laid it all out. I was so proud of him... my little negotiator. We ended up paying 25.5K. Then,... we're going over the contract, and there's a $100 processing fee with "not required by law" next to it. Of course, I didn't even see it. Anything with more than 10 consecutive numbers tends to make my head spin. But of course, David did. So he says, "I don't want to pay that." They guy says, "Why?" Dave says, "Because it's not required by law." The guy hesitated for a sec, and then crossed out the 100 bucks. What would I do without Dave?
So, after all that, we settled on a silver Toyota Tacoma with one of those half back seats... because the bed of the truck was more important to us. I'm going to include a picture from the website...it's exactly like our truck, except ours is silver. A penny spent...
Well, not two days later, we went to Lowe's and bought tons of mulch, plants etc... and even got a tiller so that I could start preparing the first of my gardening beds. It was a productive week! Here's our truck... and as Dave put it... "Todd being butch."