It ain’t always good to be cheap- A Life Lesson

Last year, the spousal unit and I faced an untimely reduction in income when he lost half of his clients, at about the same time he was shedding clients like a balding middle aged man sheds hair,our reliable and trusty car decided to give up the ghost.

 Now the old car had been bought back when we lived in Chicago and only used the car for weekend jaunts and when we only had one then preteen aged kid. So it was a rather small and uncomfortable car that had the added burden of only having two doors which we discovered was hella annoying when mini me made her  appearance a few years ago. Taking a car seat out of a two door car sucks balls as elder child would say.

So at about the time, the car was dancing its last dance, a good local buddy was selling her second car, now in trying to walk the frugal path by force we thought it would be a good idea to buy a car in cash. If you are the average person, you probably don’t have a spare 10-20K sitting around so buying a cheap car in cash is generally an endeavor that costs 2-4K. In our case the vehicle in question costs almost 3K, was supposedly in good shape and I trusted my friend but our then, note the emphasis on the word then mechanic inspected the car and said it looked alright.

Well wouldn’t you know it no sooner than the deal closed that all sorts of shit starts happening, next thing you know, we had to put some cash into the car immediately. Now in all fairness to my buddy who by the way is still my buddy, she did offer to take the car back but we figured nah, we would keep it.

Car ran ok until it was time for inspection last fall and needed almost a grand in work to make it legal to be on the road, so we forked out the money and been riding ever since. However the car’s been acting strange lately and I thought we needed a new starter, turns out the car needs engine work to the tune of a thousand dollars. Well the other day, I told the spousal unit to bring the car back home especially after the mechanic told him he didn’t know if he would fix it if it was his car. Dayum, when the mechanic says that, that leads me to believe its time to look for a new ride.

So all this to say, sometimes being cheap is not a good thing, while car payments suck, it seems it sucks even more to have an unreliable car. Needless to say the hubby and I will be starting to look for a newer car immediately since the idea of getting stranded in the middle of nowhere is not my idea of fun.

Sometimes frugality is a good thing, but kinda like my Granny always used to tell me don’t buy cheap shoes because you only have one set of feet so treat em right (no this does not give one carte blanch to only buy Jimmy Choos, but might be a reason to avoid Payless Shoes) since corns and bunions ain’t no joke. It would appear that a couple thousand dollar car is not a good idea if you need the car to last a while. Sometimes its worth it to spend the money upfront rather than my lesson in frugality which will now costs me more.