bought truck...in hot water with the Mrs.
 

Was supposed to buy $3,000 beater truck. Bought an 01 F-150 Lariat instead. Any advice to help ensure that I'll have a pulse tomorrow morning? Jewelry, flowers, etc.

ouch... gonna be hard to get past that one. maybe try the maintenance/replacement parts costs vs the reliability of the 01? I tried this in the past and was successful, just need to find a common breakdown on the beater truck and costs to replace it. Good Luck, sounds like you are going to need it.

Yup. Thanks for the idea. I'll also add that this will be a safer vehicle to transport the kids.

What really ticked her off is that she thought I was serious when I told her over the phone (while filling out paperwork) that it was only $3k. Apparently her sarcasm detector was broken.

yep, air bags are your friend...

Yeah...that and leather. Makes cleaning up kid vomit quick and easy. Well...I think we've got this one in the bag. Thanks for the help Mike. :D

Congrats on the truck hope everything worked out with the wife! When I bought my truck she didn't even want to know what it cost only that I was not going to buy a white one.

Ha! Nice work S.A.!
At least you'll have something to sleep in when she kicks ya out!! ;) Kidding, she'll be fine with it once the sticker shock goes away. Mine did the same thing...as I spent about 30% more than I told her I was going to.

Thanks.:-X03 I need to go take it for a drive so that I can enjoy it before SHTF this evening.

Lucky. Lol.

Yeah...the final cost of the truck is " to be determined.":-X19

Good luck Sterling. I'm sort of ok with current ride wife suggested to buy a truck in better shape than my 86. So my 87 is a grocery getter and the 86 my beater.

Sterling we're gonna need pics...you know this right??? :)

Ok. I'm still alive. What's the moral of the story? Don't take off and impulse buy a truck while the wifey is visiting Aunt Flow. Yeah...poor planning on my part. However, if I had it to do over again...would I have pulled the trigger? Yes. My Saturn wagon is a good little beater, but I just got sick of not having a SUV/truck type thing to drive.

I'll try to upload some pictures this weekend. For some reason, my blackberry is unable to email pictures. It's basically this truck, but cleaner. Same color, wheels, etc. The interior is spotless. They obviously didn't have kids or ever use the back seat (the drivers seat is the only one that even had wear). It was a one owner truck (original window sticker in the glove box). There's a tiny ding on the passenger side and three small scratches on the tailgate. Other than that, the body is clean.

It has skid plates, but it doesn't look like it's ever left the pavement. It came with newer P series tires, which don't look particularly impressive...but ride GREAT. Seriously...at 80 MPH on the highway, this thing purrs right along. It really runs/drives great.

2001 Ford F150 Lariat, $8,995 - Cars.com