A few months after Jenny started staying home with Brenden and I was still working nights, we realized something: we could live comfortably with only one car. I take it to work while she and Brenden (we hope!) are sleeping. I come home in the morning to sleep, and Jenny has access to the car during the day. After thinking and praying about the situation for a while, we sold Jenny’s CR-V yesterday to CarMax. I must admit I was a little sad, which is silly, but I guess that happens when you name your cars. We kept the Fit since it’s newer and gets much better gas mileage. Selling the SUV will lead to occasional inconvenience but should work fine the vast majority of the time. It will save us a bit of money each year in registration and insurance. We also have some exciting plans for the proceeds.

The CarMax experience was pleasant. All the people treated me well. Step One was a free appraisal, which took 30-45 minutes. They gave me a written offer good for 7 days. Step Two was accepting their offer and transferring the title, which took about the same amount of time. My only disappointment was that they didn’t pay me nearly as much as I’d hoped for the car. I guess that’s the price we pay for the ability to walk into a store and sell a car on the spot. We probably could have gotten more on eBay, Craiglist, or a SWA bulletin board. But we wanted to get the job done quickly, and CarMax made that possible.

Update: I just checked the sale prices for used CR-Vs on the CarMax website. They got a really, really good deal. Don’t ever sell to CarMax unless you’re really, really in a hurry.