Vehicle Angst - LONG
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| Tue, 05-12-2009 - 3:45pm |
Thought I'd check in with you ladies and see what thoughts you have. My car has been starting to fuss over the last few months and I am trying to decide what to do in terms of a new car vs fixing this one. A little background for those that don't 'know' me:
I am single, childless and work full time. I have no consumer debt but a bit over $40k in student loan debt and a pretty big house payment for a single income. I have a roommate currently and I'm not using any of that money to meet budgetary needs, just wants for the house and savings. I have at least 3 months of expenses in savings plus a good sized tax return from this year. My budget has breathing room and I don't track money very closely but close enough to know where things stand. My job is stable but I don't care for it and recently signed up for a job search group counseling 6 week session that starts next week. I did recently receive a raise for this year which was a pleasant surprise. That combined with my reduced income tax deduction leaves me up almost $200 per month in take home pay. I do save 10% for retirement and have finally gotten back to paying almost 2x my student loan payment each month. I have completely clean credit.
The car: 1999 Subaru Outback w/145k miles. Just put in about $1k about 6 weeks ago to replace the front axles and fix some fluid leaks. I thought this noise it has been making was the axle issue but low and behold, it's still there. It is very intermittent and yet very scary sounding noise. The mechanic could not reproduce the problem and said to wait until it gets worse. It's about the same a few weeks later. He did tell me that there was a tie-rod problem on one wheel that would be $300 or so to fix and that it will affect my tire wear if I don't fix it. The remote is totally broken also which is obviously just an annoyance but it's on the list of things I would fix if I would decide to keep it ($75). It does not leak oil and it runs fine, just makes this awful noise when turning at pretty slow speeds. The mechanic said it might be the tranny but I think he sort of has decided the car isn't worth fixing and he was trying to talk me out of fixing it by scaring me. It won't be going back to his shop regardless.
I could spend around $15-18k on a new to me car. I can work that into my budget and not really realize any big pain from that but I am concerned about pulling that trigger. The economy is hardly inspiring and the idea that I would be tying myself down to another big monthly bill when I want to consider changing jobs doesn't give me warm fuzzies. The thing is there isn't even a vehicle in that price range I can get very excited about owning so that isn't helping (well, it's helping if I'm trying to avoid buying LOL). I can get really excited about a Honda CRV that's closer to $25k but really can't get excited about the associated payment. I don't care for the old body style on the CRV so there isn't much on the used market in what I want.
I guess the right answer is to keep driving it until mystery noise allows itself to be diagnosed and make the decision then but it's bugging me. :) I would love to get a couple of years down the road without buying a car but at the same time, it's a pain to get it to the shop and all that crap plus who knows where the bleeding will stop money wise.
What do you all think?
Peg
PS) Sorry I wrote a novel! LOL

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I was not really sure where to mention this because its not exactly a debt suggestion but is sort of related to car remotes and alarms.
Now's a good time to buy.
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