My Motorcycle Financing Has Been Approved

Wednesday was a busy day.

The wife was a bit more patient with me than usual and agreed to head over to the First National Bank over on 168th and Maple for a quick check on what the numbers would be on a business loan for whatever motorcycle I end up buying. I left her and the three kids in the car (for whatever reason they didn't want to come into the bank) and talked to a loan officer, who took down all the info relating to the purchase and told me she'd call me back later.

Initially the plan was to put down about $9,000 or so, which would leave me financing no more than $10,000. But once I finished the sit-down with the finance gal and got back into the car, Jamie brought up that it might be a better idea to put less down and to just pay off the loan faster. Less risk and lower carrying costs on our part if anything happens and there's no pre-payment penalty when you're talking about a motorcycle loan.

Jamie left open the option to drive to Lincoln to check out the Frontier Harley-Davidson dealership there, but I figured I wouldn't do that to her. Three kids in the car, one of them teething, not a good idea to drive an hour there and an hour back just to take a look at some bikes. So we headed over to Dillon Brothers Harley, which is about a 5 minute drive from our home and less than a minute from the First National Bank I had just left.

It helps to have all the bikes at a dealership available to browse through on the Internet. Here's Dillon Harley's inventory of new bikes online - what I used to narrow down my search for what's available and (hopefully) easy to make a deal on. I was particularly looking for a deep turquoise and antique white 2009 Road King Classic.

So the family and I walked in, the kids sat down with their mom and I started looking for Jason Davis - who wasn't around. After a little bit of wandering around the dealership searching for any deep turquoise and antique white two-tone bikes, I was approached by Mick Ruff.

After talking with Mick for a while I quickly felt put at ease. Mick's a cool guy, very helpful, even if he rides a bagger with fairing. I asked to see the 2010 Harley-Davidson color chart, he got it out for me and let me check out what's in store for 2010. I showed the wife the future colors and she agreed with me - Harley-Davidson's really in love with purple for some reason. I am not sure why. So, since I didn't see anything in Harley's 2010 color scheme that was particularly appealing - other than the basic vivid black - I decided that it might not be worthwhile to wait until 2010's models were released to actually buy a motorcycle, like I'd been planning.

So, after telling Mick that I'd like to look at the deep turquoise/antique white Road King Classic that they had in stock, Mick took us all to the back storage area to check it out.

Oh yeah. It was nice. I don't know if anyone else sees the potential to really "classic" out that particular model and color, but I've got a few ideas I'm rolling around in my head about it. More on that later.

The only thing left to do was to check on the financing options, to make sure I would be approved to buy the thing. I might as well have something to compare with First National's financing numbers, right?

Mick introduced me to Mark Gifford, one of the finance guys at Dillon Brothers Harley-Davidson. Mark and I chatted a bit about our day jobs while we waited for the financing application I'd filled out to be approved.

We figured out the numbers for a deal slightly different than what I asked for at First National - $3000 down and stretching the financing terms over as long as possible, as suggested by my wife.

And yeah, I got approved.

Life is good.