Buy us a new car

We’ve paid ours off and it’s been worked on 3 times in the past year.

*angry face*

This nightmare I had

I’m going to leave all of the super-freaky details out of the this post, regarding my dream.  I’ll sum up and say; it was weird.  But more than weird, there was one super scary part!  Lets dive in!

So I get a call from a friend and he says “Hey man, I saw that nice little car sitting in your yard.”  I reply back “Oh yeah I figured, hey since I don’t have a car payment, I might as well get something new.”  Then I thought to myself “Wait, you did what?  You FINANCED ANOTHER CAR?!”

How could this happen?  Was I drunk?  Had I eaten some holiday brownies that were in fact ‘magical’?  Did I make a deal with the devil?  Who cares?! I had gone out and gotten a loan for a car!

So I spent most of the dream figuring out ways to get out of it.  I recall that I didn’t sign any documents in the dream and that was my way out.  The sheer terror of that feeling actually eventually woke me up and I remember saying “Thank God!” out loud.

So  yes, I had a nightmare about financing a vehicle.  Dave Ramsey, do I make you proud?

Built to last

As many of you know, my car has pretty much held a residence in the Mechanic’s shop for most of this year. Well fingers crossed, after $2500 bucks, lmost 3 months, and 8000 phone calls, the car should finally be fixed. I took it to three different mechanics, contacted Nissan’s Corporate office about being excluded from a recall, the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) and yes even called Clark Howard’s consumer line. Yes, I am incredibly cheap but more than money it was realization that things are just not built to last. We have become a disposable society where you “trade up” your car every 2 years, trade in your spouse when hair is lost or faces wrinkle, you switch jobs for the constant race for a bigger carrott. ENOUGH! Gone are the days when you marry your high school sweetheart, live in just one moderately sized home, and work for the same company until you get your pocket watch. I hope that we see a swing back to a time when things were made to last, and people took pride in nurturing and caring for relationships and possessions instead of tossing aside all the blood, sweat and tears that they poured into them for a newer better who or whosit. This is my rant and I hope that if nothing else I will be driving my beat up old Sentra with the Spider-Man stickered windows for many years to come.

Ok, 2008 we can be friends again

Well the Gremlins have momentarily left us alone. After having two mechanics quote over $600.00 on the car repair, we took her this morning to a shop we’ve used before only to find out that we only need to replace 1 coil, not 4. Thus, the bill should only come to about $250.00. Damn, dodged a bullet on that one. Anywhoo, I’ve been listening to our buddy Dave Ramsey this morning. For those of you who don’t know who he is, he’s a no nonsense financial guru that I absolutely LOVE! A few points that stuck out.

1) No one can change your life but you! It doesn’t matter what the market or government is doing, if you want something you’re the only one who can make that happen.

2) If you genuinely want to be out of debt (or in better shape) IT IS GOING TO TAKE SACRIFICES! If you want it, there is no room for fun. The faster you achieve your goals, the sooner you can have some fun. As long as you owe someone else, you are a slave.

3) You can make budgets all day long, but if you don’t stick to them then they are worthless.

 So that’s it for now, LOVES FOLKS!

Upkeep!

It’s really hard to keep a specific theme sometimes.  I guess if I were an overpaid late night talk show host I could have a definite routine huh?  Perhaps an overpaid athlete?  Eh, money solves nothing.  We all hear the stories of lottery winner going BANKRUPT or ending up strung out on drugs or in jail.  I can’t say how I’d react to winning tens of millions of dollars or more.  I can say one thing though, the first thing I would do is I’d get a lawyer!

Enough about lala land.  Good news today.  Our car can be fixed for a lot cheaper than the first estimate.  Nearly 1/3 the cost of the original, actually.  The guy yesterday wanted to put four brand new ignition coils in.  At 100 a pop, you can do the math!  We just need one coil and new spark plugs plus a couple other oddities.

I have nearly all of the Christmas lights down.  Enough at least to not look like “that” neighbor who leaves them up until May.  Reminds me of an old fellow that lived in my home town.  I only ever knew him as ‘Major’.  Not sure if he was a military guy or that was his actual name.  Well he left his lights up all year round but I think it was because he was elderly.  His modest showcase was the highlight of the decorating in that town, at the time.

Life comes at you fast.