I Sold My Car Today

For the first time since I was 16, I am officially carless. There's not a single piece of heavy machinery registered under the name "Michael Briddon" in the state of Massachusetts. No, sir. No ride. No wheels. No whip.

I sold my Nissan today at 10:30 AM as part of our new plan, hatched by my beautiful wife, to pay off all of our debt in 2013. This chunky transaction is going to help me annihilate the rest of my college and graduate school loans. In a word: Boom. In four words: Take that, higher education.

What's amazing is how fast it all happened. On Tuesday, Bridget suggested a creative, aggressive financial plan she'll be discussing in an upcoming post. On Wednesday, we had a family meeting. On Thursday, I agreed.

And just like that, we committed to becoming a one-car family.

We opted to go to CarMax, which I highly recommend if you are looking to get rid of your vehicle. It took exactly 74 minutes from the moment we walked in the door to the moment we walked out with a check in hand. We met with a nice guy named Rob, someone drove my car for two miles, and we left with 500 dollars more than I expected. (They even returned the Explosions in the Sky CD I'd left in the player.) It was that easy.

As we drove away in Bridget's, er, our, car, I expected to feel a moment of panic. Didn't I just give up my freedom? What if I wanted to drive across the country next weekend? What if we got a huge fight about turning the cable off and the only escape was the open road? None of those thoughts, though, gave me pause. Instead, I was excited about paying off my loans and taking another giant leap toward a better financial future.

Plus, there were these reasons:

• We live in Cambridge and every mode of public transportation is minutes away on foot. 
• I was really sick of moving my car for street cleaning. (I'll never forget the day I came home and panicked because I thought our cars were stolen. Two hundred forty bucks later, I had them both back. It wasn't the best night of my life.)
• I don't have to pay an excise tax anymore. I don't really know what it is anyway. Do you? I mean, sure, I could Google it in a few seconds, but I'd rather just be ignorant on this one. Stupid excise tax. 

Are there risks with having only one car? Sure. It could break down. We could get in an accident. We could both want it some Saturday afternoon. But I think the benefits far outweigh the detriments and it's the right decision in the long run.

Just don't tell 16-year-old Mike. He'd think it was a dumb idea. 

The Birth of the Family Meeting

Okay, the picture is somewhat deceiving. We don't have little monkeys yet. Also, we're not monkeys. But this little clan huddling together -- mostly likely talking about the Affordable Care Act or the taste of flies -- made me think of our new family meeting.

You might be asking: Why the hell do you guys have a family meeting? Can't you just, like, talk like normal people?

The answer: First off, relax. There's no need for profanity or attitude. We're all friends here. The truth is Bridget and I talk all the time, but a week ago, we started to realize we weren't really getting anywhere with some of our bigger conversations -- stuff like vacation destinations, money, and kids. Over and over, we'd just rehash the same conversation about "You know, we should do this. No, wait. We should go here!" We were like a drunk windsock with ADD. Perhaps you and your husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend/significant other do the same thing.

Thus, we came up with the family meeting.

The five rules are simple:
1. Each family meeting must be planned in advance.
2. Each family meeting must be an actual meeting at a table.
3. Each family meeting can focus on only one topic.
4. Each family meeting must not exceed 30 minutes.
5. Each family meeting must have an outcome.

Before our first family meeting, we weren't sure all this was such a good idea. Meetings, traditionally, particularly in a workplace setting, are a giant waste of time. They take too long. There are too many of them. They aren't productive. In fact, there's even a book called Death by Meeting. 

But so far, in three meetings, we've been fruitful. We've decided where and how to invest our money in the next few months, where to travel this fall (not Hawaii -- booo!), and when to start trying to have kids. (Oddly, the middle debate was the most heated.)

The meetings haven't been perfect, but we've done our best to stick to the rules. And, more importantly, they've helped us communicate more effectively -- especially about little monkeys.