I'm in a bit of a panic. I have a little more than one week left to sell this car. If I can't unload it before Drew and I leave for Philadelphia, I don't know what I'm going to do.

My mom helped me buy it in the summer of 1999, just a few weeks after my college graduation. The deal was that she would make the down payment and handle the taxes and the first few car payments. Then the payments and the insurance would become my responsibility.

Looking back on it now, I wonder if this car was a mistake. Perhaps I should have bought a reliable used car. For the next five years I was saddled with monthly payments of $292 + insurance, which yoked me to some jobs I wouldn't have taken (or kept) if I had had more financial freedom.

So the Saturn has now become a symbol of my youthful sense of entitlement. Hopefully there's a college grad out there who's a bit more pragmatic and wants to buy a car for about $17,000 less than what I paid eight years ago. If not I'm really screwed.