Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

Car Trouble Part 3: Not Quite the End

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I was hoping that when I wrote this third part of the recent car troubles series (part 1 and part 2), that it would be the last of them for a long while.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like the car karma is with us on that.  On the bright side, it doesn’t appear that anything has gotten any worse.  Before I get too far ahead of myself, let me just tell you what’s been going on.

Shortly after I wrote and posted part 2 of the car trouble series, my employer (a Credit Union), came into possession of a Suburban.  The astute reader will realize that for a credit union to come into possession of a car means that it is was  repossession.  When they have repos, they generally open them up to public bidding to try and
get rid of them.  After a lot of careful deliberation and even more careful number crunching, my wife and I decided that we would be remiss in not bidding on the Suburban if we could get a good deal on it.  It’s got 135,000 miles on it, but we’ve talked to several Suburban owners who have seen theirs drive 200,000 miles.  The retail value on it was just under $9000.  We decided that we would go to $6500.  If we couldn’t get it for that, we’d let it go.

A sign of the timesI feel that I should explain some of our rational for deciding to purchase (or attempt to purchase) the vehicle.  We are a family of four.  We also have a large Golden Retriever.  The cars that we currently own are a Chevy Cavalier, and an Oldsmobile Alero.  Neither of those will allow for taking the entire family, dog included, anywhere.  If we want to go anywhere with the dog along, we have to take both cars, or not go at all.  That particular problem doesn’t arise often, but it does arise.  The second problem is that as the kids get bigger, so do their needs for luggage space.  It’s already gotten to the point where we can’t go anywhere for more than a night or two and still get away with everything fitting in the smaller Cavalier.  A larger vehicle has been on our wish list for a while, but we haven’t been able to justify the cost or afford the payments, considering that most of the reliable ones all cost somewhere around $9-10,000 at a car dealership.  So, we figured that if we can get the Suburban for $6500 or less, we could make it work.

The final day for the bidding on the Suburban came around, and it was fast and furious.  For several hours, I was responding to either an email or a text message with the new high bid in it, and raising our bid if needed.  The price edged closer and closer to the $6500 mark and eventually passed it.  And as it did, I dropped out of the bidding.  With just me and one other bidder involved at that point, the other bidder won the auction at $6600.  It stunk, but we set a mark and stuck with it.  We were disappointed that we couldn’t get it, but sometimes that’s just the way it works.

Fast forward a couple of days.  I get an email from one of the collections officers.  The high bidder decided he couldn’t afford the vehicle and backed out.  If I still wanted it, it was mine.  I quickly called my wife to double-double check that it was still a go and then emailed him back to tell him that we’d take it.  The best part?  Because the high bidder backed out, I got it for the price of the first bid that outbid the other (3rd) bidder who dropped out at $5600.  Final price, we paid?  $5690.  After the loan paperwork was all taken care of, and about $100 was added to the total of the loan for licensing and a bit more for tax, the total of the loan was just a hair over $6100.  As a reminder, the retail value on this car is about $8900.  Even if I decided to just sell it, I would likely come out ahead.  I don’t intend to sell it, but I could if I wanted to and smell like roses afterward.

With the addition of this vehicle, we also decided to sell one of the cars to help offset the cost of the rebuilt motor in the Alero.  We’ll end up selling the Cavalier, simply because it is the smallest of the bunch and least likely to be able to transport our growing family as time goes on.  I suppose I should update you on the rebuilt motor too, as that continues to be a bit of an adventure.  We still don’t know how much it is going to cost.  Why?  Because, in the several weeks that the mechanic has had the car, they haven’t been able to tear the motor apart to assess the damage.  They’ve got a trouble car that’s in the queue in front of us, and until that car is done, they don’t have the mechanics to spare to work on ours.  Because we bought the Suburban, not having the other car hasn’t really been an issue.  If we hadn’t done that though, we’d be looking at more carpooling or a rental car.  I’m sure insurance would have picked up some of the rental, but not all of it.  And the carpooling only works on certain days.  It would have been difficult to be sure.

There you have it.  Our car troubles haven’t gotten any worse.  And, you could argue that the Suburban part actually makes it a bit better (I would).  But, the car troubles certainly aren’t entirely resolved either.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to write part 4 soon and maybe one last closing part on selling a used car too!

photo credit: M Glasgow

No Bike Commuting for Us

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Many of you, having read the previous posts on car trouble (part 1 and part 2!) will likely be asking why we think we need to have two cars.  And why we don’t do something a little more healthy, like bike commuting.

And, to be honest, I’ve considered it.  We have bikes, and our commute is less than a mile, so the distance wouldn’t be an issue.  Neither would the time.  There’s just two big reasons holding me back.

  1. Winter.  We live in North Dakota.  From mid October to Mid April, we’re lucky if the temperature gets above 40.  I don’t think that 35-40 would be so bad, but it really is only in these ranges for a few weeks in those months.  The average high in January is 18, but there are days where it stays below 0 as well.  And our annual snowfall total is over 3 feet.  Put those two together and you take about 6 months of the year out of the biking season.  Combine that with the second reason, and you’ll see why it really would only be feasible a few months out of the year.
  2. Kids.  My wife and I split duties here.  She drops them off in the morning, and I pick them up.  The oldest can ride a bike, but would never make the distance from daycare to home.  So, I’d have to get a trailer for my bike that would carry both of them.  Adding 100 pounds of trailer and kid to the back of my bike would certainly help with the workout, but would also make it pretty grueling some days.

At the moment, it just isn’t really possible to commute by bike, even in the summer.  As the kids get older and start attending school, it might be more of a possibility, but winter would still require the use of a car.  One way or the other, unless I start working from home (which isn’t a possibility unless I quit my job and start my own thing), we’ve got to have two cars.

So, biking is out.  I could carpool, but none of my coworkers live very close to me, so they’d have to go out of their way to get me.  Also, I don’t think they’d like having to pick up my kids.

Would a lifestyle and situation that allowed a bike commute be welcome?  Sure.  And it’s something that I may still try during the summer months when I don’t have to worry about picking up kids, but until then, cars it is.

Car Trouble Part 2

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Unfortunately, losing an engine in the one car wasn’t the end of our car trouble.  It was, by far, the worst of our car trouble, but, certainly not the end.

Because the engine in the other car was gone, we are down to just the one car.  We’re carpooling.  For people with office jobs, carpooling isn’t such a big deal.  For us, it’s a bit of a problem.  In order to do her job at her business, my wife needs a car to transport her clients as well as to meet her clients at their job sites or for job interviews.  Not having a car is not an option for her.  Because the company is still very young, they don’t have the financial ability to have a company car.  Which means that they have to use their personal cars.

So, everyday, we have to coordinate my getting to work, the kids getting to daycare, and then the reverse of that at the end of the day.  Still not a huge deal, right?  Until you consider that my wife’s job isn’t just a 8-5 sort of job.  As the owner of the business, there are meetings and things that she has to attend out of town, and after hours.  Just in the first week that we were doing this, she’s had to be late to meetings so that she could leave long enough to pick up the kids, then me, and then drop us off at the curb in front of our house.  An inconvenience at the least.  Luckily, everyone has been pretty understanding so far.  But, the longer we are without that second car, the more chance there is that she’ll have to be late to or miss a meeting with someone who won’t be so understanding.  And if that happens, it means lost work for her and the company, which means lost revenue.

But, I’ve gotten off on a bit of tangent.

Because we have an increasing need to use the second car, we needed to put new tires on it.  We’ve known that it would need the tires, but because it was the car that I was driving to work and back, it wasn’t a priority.  I drive less than a mile total each day, so dealing with bad tires wasn’t a big deal.  Now, with my wife driving the car every day and putting more mile on it in a day than I normally did in a month, the tires became a big deal.  Especially in the dead of winter.  So, new tires it was. A planned expense, but a rushed one that came before we were truly prepared to do it.

IMG_1147To finish it all off, the day after we put the new tires on the car, my wife came home to pick up a couple of things for a meeting she had later in the day.  The neighbor across the street had a friend come and pick her up for an appointment, and, while backing out of the neighbors driveway, backed right into the side of the car.  The better part of the drivers side door is now concave, and the drivers side mirror is shattered.  Luckily, the other driver has insurance, so we’re hoping that it will pick up the damages.  But, because the other car is in the shop until further notice, we’ll have to wait until it gets out to send the other one in for repairs.  And we’ll be carpooling still.  Just in the other car.

And that, my friends, is our January in cars.  Here’s hoping for a less turbulent February.  I’d say a less turbulent 2011, but I don’t want to jinx it…

photo credit: majcher