Tuesday was a rainy day. The sky was blue, the air was very muggy, but did it rain. I am not quite sure that it reached the pouring stage, but it felt like it.
In Virginia, we have the annual car inspection, where you pay $16.00 to have a licensed inspector give your vehicle the once around and the official sticker that says you are good to go for another year.
I dropped the car off, and by 10:00, I got the call: I knew the voice on the other side would tell me that I could either pick my car up or…come on, big money, no whammie!!
The tires on the right side of the car failed. The alignment on the car was off (majorly) and it had ruined those tires. He gave me a quote for the alignment, and I hung up. Cindy helped me to call around to the usual tire places to see what to expect, and then I called the garage back. He could beat those prices (and did). When it was all said and done, Inspection, Tires, Balancing, Stems, Disposal, Alignment AND reinspection, I was out $360.00.
That wouldn’t have been so bad had I not just spent $320.00 on fixing the right hand passenger window, which was beginning to slip.
Tuesday was a $680.00 rainy day. However, I stayed dry. One of the line items in my budget is “Car Repairs.” Each month, $30.00 goes over and sits in a money market account, waiting to be needed. Having been used recently, it had not built back up. However, I had been saving for a Kindle (I had made it to $370.00)…and then, there was the emergency fund.
Funny thing about having an emergency fund that can cover you for six months of expenses – once you get it, you do not want to touch it. Thinking long and hard (oh, about a minute), I came to the conclusion that there will always be Kindles. With my Car Repair Money, the Kindle money about $90.00 from the emergency fund, I was able to cover Murphy.
That’s what life is like when you live debt free – you fix what can be fixed, and you delay pleasure in order to save (or in the case of the Kindle, resave) for the items. Here is another bit of insight that struck me – I wanted my emergency fund more than I wanted a Kindle. How weird is that?
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