One step forward, two steps back! That’s how I feel right now. We are making good progress on out debt. We are budgeting and saving money in our sinking funds. But life keeps throwing us curve balls!
Last night my husband’s car was stolen. My son had to drive over an hour to work so they traded cars that day. It was stolen off the street in broad daylight. There is video surveillance of it being stolen, but all we could do was file a police report. (It could have been worse. I’m so glad it’s just a stolen car and wasn’t a carjacking or worse! And I’m so thankful that my son is safe!)
It was our “reliable” car and our car that got the best gas mileage. It was a 2015 Hyundai Sonata. We have two remaining vehicles, a 1990 Chevy Silverado and a 2001 Ford Ranger. (Full disclosure, my mom lives with us and graciously allows us to use her 2017 Subaru Forrester which is also very reliable and gets good gas mileage but isn’t OURS.)
Luckily, we have full coverage on that vehicle so we will call insurance and go from there. We should get around $7000 from insurance. We have started a new car fund, but we haven’t saved as much as we would like because we are having to buy a new vehicle earlier than expected.
We will have $12,000 to work with. We haven’t decided if we will buy the best car we can for $12,000 or buy new and have a car payment. (I know the math and I’m not asking for suggestions, just sharing where we are.)
We tend to prefer new cars but then we drive them until they die (or get stolen in this case). We have purchased 4 new cars in our 23 years together: 2001 Honda Civic (drove for 9 years when it was totaled in a hit and run accident), 2003 Santa Fe (daily driver for 12 years (7 with me, 5 with my husband) and kept as our “Home Depot” car for another 4 years), 2010 Chevy Traverse (driven for 12 years and 230,000 miles until the repairs started to become too frequent and costly), and our 2015 Hyundai Sonata (driven for 9 years and 170,000 until it was stolen).
Last night and today have been rough, but I am a glass half-full person so I am looking at the bright side. Everybody is safe, no one was hurt, and my husband’s work is very understanding and working remotely indefinitely won’t be a problem.
It just sucks but it could always be worse. Whine over.
February 14th, 2024 at 06:49 pm 1707936577
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