Budget Busted

My car budget is blown for the year. Probably for next year too.

Back on January 6th, I slid sideways into a curb with my Subaru. That led to around $700 in repairs.

Then I had to register my old beater '94 Saturn. The boot on the tie rod end was torn and I needed new brake pads. So the same friend who repaired my Subaru fixed that problem and did a brake job.

Then the other Saturn (a '99) had a collapsed engine mount that needed replacing. After that, the brakes on that Saturn started squealing, but not when pressing on the brake pedal. Only when the pedal was released. That turned into a $500 brake job because it needed new pads, rotors, and calipers.

You can imagine my dismay when I took the '99 Saturn in to have it inspected and it needs an alignment (pretty obvious uneven wear on the tires) and it has a slow coolant leak. There goes another $350.

The cherry on top of this whole car mess? The rear wheel on the Subaru (where I hit the curb back in January) started making noises. The bearing was damaged and getting worse. So I just had the bearing replaced for another $250. When it rains, it pours.

That's a LOT of repairs in a 3 month period. We're talking more than $2000 plus the registration fees that I had to pay the state for three little blue stickers. Sure, some of it was my own fault, and I could probably have filed an insurance claim for part of the Subaru repair. But after my deductible, it wouldn't have helped me out THAT much and I didn't want the increased insurance premium.

It could be worse. We OWN all three cars. We haven't had a car payment for several years. That's the ONLY way we could afford all of these repairs.