I bought a new car yesterday, as the sketch for last night pointed out. But the car-buying process was full of details and surprises that I was ill-prepared for, even though I’d been talking to friends and family members for months before I ever actually set foot in a car dealership showroom. Here, in no particular order, are the things I figured out for myself yesterday and over the course of the past few months about buying a car.

1. There’s a lot of waiting. I think the dealers do this on purpose. You sit around and wait for the salesman to draw up some basic paperwork. You wait for the customer service representative to walk you through several things and try to get you to buy the extended warranty. You want for the the finance people to come talk to you (and try to sell you other things). You spend a lot of time waiting around with nothing to do. I spent two and a half hours at the dealership yesterday, but filling out the actual paperwork and getting everything taken care of so I could drive off the lot with the car took all of about 45 minutes, maybe an hour. I think there’s a bunch of down time so you can lock you in to buying the car, even if it’s not as good a deal as you could get: you’ve already waited so long to get through all of this, so you might as well buy the car.

2. Credit doesn’t work the way you think it does. I was always told to avoid borrowing money as I grew up and throughout my twenties. “Pay off your credit card in full each month, and you’ll be in good shape,” my parents said. “Don’t carry a balance month to month, that looks bad,” they said. Well, it bit me in the ass when I went to my bank to try to get a loan. Now, I’ve been with this particular bank for almost seven years. I have a checking account and a savings account with them. I am not behind on my bills, make regular payments on everything like I’m supposed to; I have done everything right, exactly the way I was taught to. I didn’t have several credit cards, I don’t have outstanding balances on anything, I don’t let my accounts get too low or overdraft or anything like that. And the bank turned me down for a loan. They said I had good credit – excellent credit, in fact – but that my credit history was so limited, they didn’t feel safe loaning me money. “You should have taken out loans in your twenties to pay for big-ticket items,” the woman from the bank told me. I asked if I was being penalized for being too smart to borrow a lot of money and live outside my means when I was first starting a real job, and she didn’t really have an answer for that.

3. Car salesmen aren’t evil. To hear my parents and grandparents tell of it, car salesmen are always on the lookout for an easy mark. They’re shady, underhanded, and will do whatever it takes to get you in a car and spending more money than you really should. They will do whatever it takes to make that sale. Except…well, the guy who helped me was pretty honest and pretty straightforward about everything. He was up-front about costs, about rates, about trade-in value and things of that nature. He pressured me just a little bit – and honestly, it wasn’t even really pressure, because I’d expressed interest in the exact higher model he proceeded to show me – once, but when I told him I wanted the lower model, he immediately dropped the topic of the more expensive model, found me exactly what I wanted, and made it very easy for me. He was a nice guy. Human, even. Sure, there are probably snakeoil salesmen out there who will do whatever it takes to make you buy a bigger, fancier, more expensive car than you really need, but I think most of them are probably pretty decent guys just trying to make a living. This guy did right by me, and if I buy the same brand of car again next time, I’ll probably go right back to him. He automatically gave me a good discount and a good deal on my trade-in (which wasn’t worth nearly as much as he gave me), all without me really having to ask him to do so.

4. Interest payments aren’t so terrible. I’d been given the impression that having a longer loan would make the final cost of the car skyrocket. In reality, the way interest rates are in the U.S. today, I (a first-time car buyer, remember) got a pretty damn good rate (in addition to a nice rebate and even a discount). The interest on my loan will amount to less than the rebate I got, even over 5 years.

5. Dealers are confused when you turn down the extra stuff. The extras – the extended warranty, the service package, things like that – are where most car dealerships make their big money. It doesn’t really cost them anything, but they can get thousands of dollars out of it. And all you have to do is say “no,” and their eyes go all buggy. This tactic I was expecting: they talk up how useful these packages are, tell you they basically pay for themselves, hint that not getting them could mean catastrophe. But my honest response was, “No, I trust that you are selling me a car that will be reliable and solid and dependable for the next decade. Why would I need extra coverage for that? Are you saying the car’s not reliable?” But they almost seemed to take it as a personal affront: why wouldn’t you want extra protection? Isn’t extra protection good?

And that’s really it. Car buying isn’t a difficult thing, not if you go in prepared. And hey, now you’re more prepared, right?