January 11, 2010
Daily Exercise Update: I spent 20+ minutes at the park playing with a friend’s 15-month-old daughter. Aka, chasing tiny little gigglefest around sand and dirt. I feel creaky.
Please check out this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance at Darwin’s Finance!
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I’m due for a good overhaul.
Not only have I done nothing about the previous list of repairs, I’ve gone and racked up another couple To Dos: the heater’s gone out since we last discussed the ole horseless carriage, and it’s time for another oil change. Already.
This is the flip side of loving an old car. And I doubt I’ve got time to rack up enough Driver’s Edge purchase point credits to apply towards the repair costs because I derailed that plan with the credit card promotions I wanted to fulfill. Ooops. That was my fault, I just didn’t think about the poor timing and make a better final decision.
Keeping the two plans separated should not have been too difficult. Typically I’d accomplish one goal, earning points on the Driver’s Edge card first with only normal spending, and then move on to the next set of credit cards. But while we’re second guessing decisions here, let’s calculate the cost-benefit of splitting up my spending across the three cards for promos. I’ve got a nice spreadsheet for tracking the promotions:
Chase Sapphire: $100 cash ($6 spent)American Express: $150 in GCs ($1100 spent)
Citi Forward: $100-110 in GCs ($250 spent)
Had I collected that spending ($1356) on the Driver’s Edge card, I would have earned 1356 points, which translates into $13.56 in Driver’s Edge dollars. That frees up the same amount of Drive mile dollars ($13.56).
On second thought, the net gain is higher this way because even doubled (by adding the existing Drive miles points in dollar value), I’d still have less than $50 to spend on repairs. The Chase promotion, paid in cash, more than covers that amount.
I made the right decision there, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’ve still got to get the car to the shop. We’re only a few thousand miles away from a 100,000 mile check, too, so I should gird myself for spending a fair chunk of the car maintenance fund on this set of repairs. Wish me luck!
May 11, 2009
I love my current ride, which I did buy new, but I just don’t see myself doing that again. New cars are great but they mostly smell like big fat monthly payments, insane insurance premiums, and freaking out over every ding and dent. My car’s six years old and I still get mad every time I discover a new scratch. My nerves just can’t take this.
I discovered three new dents in the driver’s side door last weekend and my blood’s still boiling.
The older I get, the more I feel like I’d be happy with an older beater car, something about 10 or 15 years old with just basic amenities like heat, a/c, working locks and windows. Not just happy, happier. Happier that I can worry less about the car being stolen, broken into (I leave nothing of value in there), or vandalized. I could be totally wrong about that last, because if you’re parking in an iffy area, I doubt it matters what you drive. But again, if it were an old, properly functioning vehicle, that wasn’t worth too much, it probably wouldn’t matter as much as a $23k car, right?
Am I fooling myself, though? I’ve only ever driven a real beater car for a short time back in college when I was between cars and someone had gifted my brother a really old two-door Toyota circa 1980.
Blame it on a hazy memory, but it wasn’t that bad. I do hate manual windows because I can’t reach across the car and roll down the passenger side window, but also because my hands are the first to go when I’m having a bout with the disease. Then again, it’s not like I was stuck with it.
Perhaps I’m more willing to wear [a little of] my money than drive it. This is all hypothetical anyway. She’s on a 20-year contract, aka: I’m driving her until the wheels fall off, replacing them, and driving her some more. 🙂
August 27, 2008
*looking around*
Is it really Wednesday? The last Wednesday of the month? Already?
Geez.
I feel like it’s been ages since I last blogged, and it’s probably due to the action-packed-ness of life. Let’s see. When we last met … oh, that was yesterday? Good grief!
Well, since yesterday I’ve:
~ discovered that I would need to make 81% more money than I do now to be “equally comfortable” in New York.
~ forced myself to go to a networking event in the downtown area (I hate driving in downtown, especially during high traffic), exchanged business cards with two people, and got out of the scary dark neighborhood safely.
~ met with NY friends who were in town for a couple days, and recommended that they try public transportation to get back to the airport. Happy to report that went smooth as silk, and they enjoyed not sitting in traffic greatly.
Spending since Friday?
~ we had a mandatory work event on Saturday so I combined a help-a-coworker-out situation with the work event so we could carpool part of the way: + saved on a little gas.
~ went to tea with a coupla the gals: – $14
~ visited a comic shop: priceless (and I didn’t spend anything): $0
~ bought ten pounds of pork shoulder ribs (that’ll last our family a good while, we cook it various ways and I like pork): – $10
~ did my “home”work at Borders: free air conditioning! and made money, of course.
~ brother actually paid a bit of money towards household bills: + $100
~ missed a friend’s 21st birthday party because my train was late: $0
~ went to the networking event at a bar: $0
~ went to another bar afterwards to meet up with my friends: $4 for a burger I bought before getting TO the bar. Tacky? Only if the staff were around. We hung out on the patio after 10 when drinks were no longer allowed outside so there were no witnesses, and their kitchen was closed by the time I got there anyway.
My car is being a brat and celebrating our fifth year together by falling apart in tiny ways:
1. The auto lock on the driver’s side doesn’t work.
2. The window on the passenger’s side doesn’t work.
3. The “cabin” light switch needs strange toggling to work.
4. The heater went out this morning.
August 22, 2008
Not wholly unexpected, I’ll admit, but somehow one of the DMV registration bills slipped through the cracks and wasn’t entered into my planner. While filing an already paid registration bill, I realized that the one at the top of the file was one coming due today. That’s another $145 deduction from the auto maintenance fund. Rats. I cannot wait until I’m only paying registration and insurance for one or two cars, not three.
July 24, 2008
The lock on my driver’s side has been malfunctioning on and off, more on lately than off, over the past month. It doesn’t respond to the remote when I arm the alarm, so I hear a quiet little *thunk* …. *thunk*….. *thunk* as the door tries to lock in order before arming the alarm. Since it can’t quite make it, the alarm is never properly armed, so I have to manually lock and unlock that door in order to use the remote alarm.
It’s mostly inconvenient, but when I’m busy and in a hurry, I don’t want to forget and rush off leaving my baby unprotected! A family friend promised to come over and teach me how to diagnose and fix the problem, but it’s been two weeks and the man still hasn’t called or shown up, so I’ve asked a good friend to help me out.
He thinks he knows what’s wrong with it, but I’m going to put it through a field test to be sure of exactly what does and doesn’t work before I go spending money on it. With any luck, it’s just the one lock unit that will have to be replaced, and he can help me install it. In the meantime, I’ve found a couple car enthusiast forums with huge lists of installation guides, and am hoping to learn some car savviness, wish me luck!
June 22, 2008
The timing belt for the family sedan broke last week:
$40, tow
$150, repair
Truck Registration, due June 30th:
$240
Sedan Registration, due August 20th:
$150
Pfoooo! As if gas prices weren’t bad enough, the cars themselves have to get in on the act. That’s going to make a hefty dent into the car maintenance fund, thank goodness I actually have it set up, though. I can’t even imagine pulling my hair out trying to make these bills fit into an already strained budget.
March 16, 2008
I just found out that, in addition to the $500 deductible I’ve already put on a credit card for the sedan’s repairs, I need to come up with another $500 for getting my car fixed, AND MaDucky went out and destroyed another tire to the tune of $80. Unfortunately, the first deductible, and multiple other tire-related accidents, have already drained the car fund that was for this very purpose. *sigh*
In the spirit of not letting bad news drag me down, I’m looking for creative ways to recoup the losses, since I’m now limited in the hours I can put in at the job.
