D's car had bad day last week when it would not go into reverse. I thought oh know here we go again. Ty got into it the next day and it seemed fine. She drove it too work and while it made some funny noises it seemed okay. D took the other car to work for the next two nights but by Friday he felt it was okay to take it to work. At 9:00 pm he called saying he was stranded. He got as far as the Golden Corral in Layton before the transmission exploded all over the freeway. Boo and I hoped into the car to go and save him. When we got to where he was he had been on hold with the insurance company for over 20 min trying to get the okay to call a tow-truck. After another 15 min he finally got ahold of them and they called a tow-truck to take the car to the repair shop. Today he called the shop and they said they could put in a new one for $2000 (this is transmission #3)
So now comes the decision. Do we sink that kind of money into a car with 200,000 miles on it? logically how many more miles can we get out of the car before anything worse breaks. Do we spend the money hoping to get another 100,00o miles or do we find the money in the budget to purchase a newer car with fewer miles? I wish I had a crystal ball that could foresee the future. It is tough to decide. We know the car, the engine seems okay but I am scared that we spend the money, we drive it for six months and the engine blows up. Lately it has been a couple of hundred dollars every other month to fix this car. It is like having a car payment without a new car.
We had planned on taking the kids to San Diego this August for a week. We have not been on a family vacation for many years. I guess I must have thought something might happen because I had not booked hotel rooms yet. Who knows what will happen. The last time we had to replace the transmission it took the majority of our tax return. Same now. I just feel so bad that the kids have to miss out on something fun because of a dumb car that we need. How does it know?
Oh and to top off a great weekend the HOA from hell sent us a lovely letter saying if we did not take down the temporary fence that is keeping my dog from escaping they would begin to fine us by the day. I now have to pay for vinyl fence so that we can keep the dog in the backyard. Talk about kicking us while we are down.
Lottery anyone?
