Welcome to the Dad Diaries, where, every so often, I will write down whatever is coming up in my life as a father of now two children. Cars, and the decision of what to buy, how big, how much, etc. are a burden for dads (or providers, not just dads) everywhere. Figured I’d write about my six months of car shopping, and how I landed on a 2024 Kia Telluride, and why I love that I did. 

I bought a 2024 Kia Telluride a few weeks ago.

This was a decision that took roughly six months to make, a process that began when I accepted the job to become the new assistant beach volleyball coach at Florida State University in mid-June of 2024.

At that point, my wife and I were a one-car family, owners of a 2016 Honda Civic that had been paid off since 2018. We loved – no, cherished – the one-car life. In Hermosa Beach, California, where we lived before moving across the country to Tallahassee, Florida, we could walk virtually everywhere we needed to go: the grocery store, gym, and “work” – the beach, in our cases as professional beach volleyball players and coaches. Everything we needed was no more than a mile away. The only real cause to drive anywhere was to see her family, an hour or two up the road or when tournaments called for a haul up or down the coast.

When I took the job, I knew this would change.

Another car would be needed (I say “need” even though, really, it is just preferred, for ease and convenience and all the rest, but the line between need and want is a little blurred for reasons you’ll read below).

The search began.

As did an impending trilemma.

See, we weren’t just moving to an area far less walkable than Hermosa Beach, whose walkability is one of its finer features. We were adding to our family, with a child due in February. The neighborhood into which we were moving in Tallahassee was a 20-minute drive from almost everything: my work, Trader Joe’s, church, the doctor’s office – literally everything. Our running joke is that we no longer need to ask one another how long it’ll take us to get anywhere, because anywhere we go will take somewhere between 15 and 23 minutes. Not terribly far, but enough that two cars – one for my commute, one for Delaney and the kids – would soon become somewhat mandatory.

This, of course, presented the simple question – what car? – that came with no simple answer.

I boiled it down to, essentially, three options:

Option one: The Cheap Used Car

The first option that came to mind was to buy a used clunker, something for cheap — $10,000 or less — that would last for a few years, years in which I could then save up additional cash to eventually splurge on a better car, years in which I would simply pray that nothing too expensive or terrible happened to the Clunker so it wouldn’t become a recurring burden, both financially and on my time and sanity. I am an avid reader of Mr. Money Mustache, and his regular blogs on the financial black holes of cars nudged me in this direction. I almost pulled the trigger on a Honda Fit with 200,000 miles for $2,000 but, it being a Honda – wonderful cars, those Hondas – notwithstanding, couldn’t do it. Too risky, I thought. It could die in its metaphorical sleep any day.

I was also tempted, scrolling through the Tallahassee Craigslist, to take a Mercedes ($4,500 with 143,000 miles), a BMW (I forget the pricing but it was cheap), a Nissan ($18,000, 20,000 miles, all which fit the parameters of what I was looking for – mostly cheap, clean titles, less than 150,000 miles – but none of which gave me the gut instinct to actually pull the trigger. Along with that, if I bought something used, something that I would have to replace relatively soon – within five to seven years, most likely – then that would put our family at likely needing two cars around the same time, given our Civic has 115,000 miles on it. Buying two cars at once was not a tempting proposition, and it became less tempting when I thought about how the expenses for children are exponential as they eat real food that we have to buy, and more of it. As the options for a used and cheap but reliable Clunker looked increasingly bleak, I began to delve into the second potential avenue for our new vehicle:

Option 2: Another small car

Option two was to buy a decent, potentially new, but could be used, sedan. Think Toyota Corolla, Toyota Camry, Honda Civic, or Honda Accord. This would solve for the immediate problem of us needing two cars, and I am enamored with all four of the above, as they are ultra-reliable, can last for more than 200,000 miles if you take care of it, and are magnificent on fuel efficiency. This was, in reality, only a brief consideration, as it didn’t solve for one of our more long-term issues down the road: These are small cars. We will be a big family. Currently, we’re a family of four. In five years, there might be five or, heaven help me, six of us. A small car wouldn’t do us much good. This drew us to option three…

Option 3: The Big Daddy SUV

Option three was to bring home a new SUV. I say new, because the used clunker types were thrown out the door by a combination of reasons detailed in the first two options. A Honda loyalist, my first choice was a Pilot, a tremendous vehicle that is both massive (seven seats) and reliable. Comparable cars were thrown into the mix, such as the Toyota Highlander and Kia Telluride. Mid-sized SUVs were never seriously considered, as cars such as a Toyota Rav4, Honda CRV, Honda Passport, and Honda HRV, would likely wind up too small to handle a family of potentially six sometime down the road, which would just have us wind up back at this car-buying crossroads that added no small deal of stress to my life.

I don’t like buying cars; they’re financial holes, even if you buy a great one, and can be a disaster if you buy the wrong one. I still have quite a bit of scar tissue from the number of lemons my parents bought throughout my childhood – Chevys and Fords and GMCs and Izuzus and Hyundais, a nightmarish Mercury and an ancient BMW that simply gave up on the spot in the middle of an intersection while I was driving my brother to school – and from my first car purchase, a 2008 Chevy Aveo that was as bad as you can imagine. My awful time with the Aveo was why I opted for a new Civic as opposed to a used car, and to this day, nine years later, it has been one of the smarter uses of $17,000 I’ve ever spent (I do not, however, consider this an “investment” because the Civic, lovely as she is, continues to drain money in the form of gas, insurance, registration, regular maintenance, etc.; that said, it has cost less than any other vehicle I can possibly imagine purchasing, and I did and do need a car, making it $17,000 I needed to spend, which is why I do consider it a good purchase).

The Final List: Kia Telluride, Tesla Model Y, Honda Pilot, Toyota Highlander

My list, then, was narrowed down to four: Honda Pilot, Toyota Highlander, Kia Telluride, and Tesla Model Y, all of which operate in the $40,000-$55,000 range.

A Y was the leader for a long stretch, namely for its nominal charging costs, virtually nonexistent maintenance, ability to last upwards of 400,000 miles, and my wife wanted one as badly as she wanted our second child. But the Y, even the model with three rows of seats, was soon doomed to the fate of the smaller SUVs: I didn’t think it would be big enough for our family, and then we’d be stuck, one day, with two large cars: A Y and an SUV even bigger. I want a small car and a big one, not a big car and a bigger one. The Y, I was sad to note, was out (when it comes time to replace the Civic, however, a Tesla is a leading candidate).

Toyota Highlander and Honda Pilot: Priced out

Enter the Toyota Highlander. I fell in love with the Highlander the moment I stepped into one at the local Toyota dealership. But the sticker price shocked me: Upwards of $50,000 all-in. Granted, over the course of, say, 20 years, this would be eventually acceptable – I guess? – but it hurt my soul to see that number. I didn’t think I could do it; too much money for a vehicle that, surprisingly enough, was not rated all that high on Kelly Blue Book. All I really cared about in our future vehicle was reliability and space in the back seats. The salesperson who showed me around a few Highlanders and Rav4s at Toyota couldn’t believe the first thing I did when inspecting a vehicle was check the back seat. I never bothered listening to the sales pitch about all of the bells and whistles; don’t need ’em. Just need to know how many car seats we can jam back here, with room for a bag of volleyballs. For a Toyota, the Highlander, interestingly, was not remarkable in the reliability category, though there is nothing left to be desired in the space category. Pilots, while more reliable, per the ratings, than a Highlander, also come with a similar, albeit slightly more palatable ($42,000 msrp) price tag as the Highlander. Both, I shrugged, despondent, were out.

Hello, Kia Telluride

I had reservations about anything not named Honda or Toyota. Plenty of them, kudos of the long list of aforementioned lemons from every brand not named Honda or Toyota (in Kia’s defense, we never owned a Kia, so I had no prior experience in that realm, but I was so fixated on getting a Honda or Toyota that I was naturally hesitant on anything outside of those empires). But as my search grew more urgent and I investigated deeper, the Telluride continued popping up, in every category I wanted: reliability (4.8/5 on Kelly Blue Book, a staggering number for a car its size), space (can fit a small army), fuel economy (23 miles per gallon currently), and price (cheaper than anything in its category, even cheaper than many of the mid-sized SUVs and sedans).

It was, in the end, the final category that literally sold me.

An ad appeared on my phone for a brand new 2024 Telluride LX for $36,000, a whopping $14,000 cheaper than the Highlander on the lot at Toyota. I called immediately, and they said if I picked it up that day, I could get it for $34,000.

I picked it up that day.

And when I say “it” I don’t mean the LX, either. Kia had a Telluride SX, its highest trim model, that had been used for demos, they also wanted to get off the lot. Sticker price: $54,000. Would I take the SX, with 3,800 miles, for the same price as the LX ($34,000)?

Sure.

So here we are, owners of a new 2024 Kia Telluride SX.

I love this car. My wife loves this car. My son, who enjoys using it as a personal jungle gym, loves this car.

And we’ll love it for the next 20 years, minimum, which means the next decision I need to make on a car will be how to replace our Civic, which I’d anticipate having at least 10 good years left, if not more.

The Telluride solved a problem for a decade.

Why am I writing this? Because I would have found this blog immensely useful to me during my car search.

So if you’re looking for a family vehicle for the best bang for the buck, one that’s both immensely reliable and also, relative to the car market as a whole, a bargain, the Telluride is where it’s at.