Please karma? I’ve been good…come visit me!

Honestly right now, I sometimes just want to go lie in bed and curl up and forget about everything. Very depressing I know.  Sometimes though? I just can’t make myself see the bright side of things.  What’s going on you may ask? My car.  Let’s give some background on this:

For awhile we did not have any car.  We borrowed our roommate’s bike to get to work (he had two thankfully) and bummed rides to the grocery store or laundry mat.  We got sick of it and after a few false starts; we were able to save money to buy a car.  Well kind of.  A co-worker let us pay 2/3 of the cost at one paycheck and the rest two weeks later.  This was so that we could put the car on the road during that first time we had it. The grand total of said car? $500 plus whatever we spent to put it on the road (taxes, registration, gas, car insurance) Yes, he sold us our car for $500.  Which was great for us on when we were starting out but now it’s coming back to haunt us.

First issue: It actually wasn’t major.  We went to change the oil and no one was able to get the bolt off of the oil pan. Turns out the previous owner had forced a too big bolt into the hole, stripped it and just left it.  I still don’t know how exactly the mechanic got it off. And of course tires.  We needed to replace all four tires and it cost us $500-we did two at a time and did it a few months after we really should have but when you don’t have money? You make do. Oh? The other issue from the previous owner is that he forced a too big electrical seat into the front driver side.  I drive with a pillow because it doesn’t like to make adjustments—it’s easier to leave it on the length my fiancé needs and just deal with the pillow.  I don’t drive much as it’s not very comfy.

Second issue: this last winter, our car was having a huge issue of going through antifreeze every few days.  It turns out there is a leak that we didn’t know about. Took it in to get a quote and it will be about $1100 to fix as we have to fix the leak and some wires.  We didn’t get it done as we just don’t want to spend that much on this car.

Third Issue: Our steering column will lock up if you turn the key all the way off.  You need to let it make an annoying dinging sound in order to make it so you don’t have to sit there for 15 minutes trying to get the key to turn over.  Plus, after getting both the front and back breaks changed? We think the wheel bearing needs to be changed.

Now, there’s been a few times where our car won’t start and we have to get it jumped.  The first time there was a really bad storm and we wrote it off to a freak occurrence of hail and rain getting in and maybe shorting it out.  Really we knew we were just fooling ourselves but it was fine for a few weeks.  Que yesterday.  It went out at work at lunch.  We got it jumped, went up to Autozone and found out our battery is just fine.  It’s our alternator or drive belt that is going bad.  So this weekend we’re going to buy a belt and see if we can get by with that as a fix for now.  Otherwise…..well…

No honeymoon.  We might have to purchase a new to us car and if we cut out our honeymoon from the wedding budget, that would be a nice(r) car for us. Very soon.  It’s not something we want to do and we had already decided to go to a small little resort type town nearer to us to save costs there. But we need a car to get by in our town—there is not a lot of public transportation readily available and we no longer live with a roommate who can give us a ride. If we do have to cut it our honeymoon, we might do a weekend getaway and we will start saving for it for the year after.  Or a few months after our wedding. And who knows? Maybe we can do both….

So cross your fingers that it will be a quick fix with the drive belt.  And if someone can answer me on why every time we need something fixed, it costs the exact amount that is in our car fund?  We bought a car jump kit for a quick(er) fix and in case the battery needs to be jumped again.  And it cleared out our car fund but we feel a little better for it—now if we are in the country, we’ll have a way to get it started, you know?

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