I’ve been quite engaged this past week with a lot of load of this.

Pun intended.

And now that John’s gone, I’m looking around at the destruction left in the wake of someone preparing to be a geo-bachelor for… an as of yet undetermined amount of time, and all I want to do is take a nap. Is it a good thing that we haven’t had a call for a showing in over three weeks? Because right now it feels like it is, even though all I wanted to do when John left was get in the truck and drive off with him.

How Far Do You Push Your Car?

John got a very late start, even by our standards. He got stuck at the Toyota dealership trying to get the converter-thingie fixed that makes the trailer lights work. The part that was needed is no longer available. Quote: Wow, we haven’t seen one of these in a loooong time. They don’t make that part anymore for ones this old, boy how-die.

The guy was talking about our 1999 Toyota 4Runner like it was a machine relic. The thing’s running great, you know? Pushing 200,000 miles and still holding strong.

We’ll see how it’s faring after this trip, though. And after towing (almost? over?) 1000 pounds of schtuff. If he had to do it all over again, John’s already saying that he would have had the movers come and do a split move: take part of his stuff now and the rest of it (with us) later. Thing is, either way, we’re on the hook for the cost of his move in the short-term: he won’t get reimbursed for anything until we’re all moved. Time will tell when that happens…

How far do you push your car? Is 11-years-old really so … unusual?

Oh — and once they finally got a converter-thingie part jimmy-rigged so John could drive cross-country without getting arrested for not having rear lights on his 1000-pound trailer? They bid him adieu — with no charge, in honor of a military man with a trailer load of stuff fixing to move cross-country, geo-bachelor like. Thank you, Toyota.

Debt Payments in April: $2,580.53

Interest: $2,078.73


Principle: $501.80

• Total Debt: $311,014.06

Second Mortgage: $31,482.99

Rental Mortgage: $108,899.92

Primary Mortgage: $170,631.15

*****

Our Debt Snowball is taking a breather. We made our regularly scheduled payments and nothing extra. And I’m okay with that. Instead of throwing snowflakes on the debt snowball, I am throwing as much cash as I can into our “Emergency Fund” — aka, We’re Selling a House and Get Ready We Might Have to Bring Money to Closing Fund. The Snowball is officially on hold until further notice.

Who knows? Selling this house may bring an early Spring…

Budget Busters

Despite having $1,514.98 in car repair in April, we were still able to replenish our $1000 emergency fund, and then some. This was possible because we not only received a (partial) payment from our newly rented house in Vegas, but we also got a check for an escrow surplus from the rental mortgage company. Can we say, Hello, dropping property values?

I planned on outlining exactly what the $1,514.98 repair cost was for, and exactly how much we got in our rent check and for our escrow surplus… But honestly? I am so tired right now from House Stuff and getting this place ready to put up for sale, I can hardly see straight. It doesn’t help that I feel like I have sand in my eyes, thank you Ohio trees.

The realtor comes back tomorrow, to put up a for sale sign on our yard. Then I guess it will be official. So, so weird… The Hubs leaves for four months and thinks he’s coming back home for one more leisurely year in Ohio. Instead he’ll come home to find his house for sale. And possibly sold? Hmmm… Time will tell if my prognostications are correct.

And I think that big word just depleted my final ounce of energy for the night. More tomorrow. Maybe. Zzzzz…

Whew, what a Spring Break we’re having! We drive almost 800 miles to visit family in Kansas; the air conditioner goes out in the van; my youngest has an ear infection and a sinus infection; and my oldest has strep. Oh, and my camera broke. Why is it we came here again? Hmm…

To be honest, it sounds much worse than it really is. We had a fun, full, beautiful Easter Sunday with lots of good food, family, and conversation. And my mom gave me her old camera to use. So I could take a ton of these.

All. Cousins.

Nine boys and one girl: the offspring of three sisters. Lots and lots of testosterone…

… and one Queen Bee. You could kinda say she revels in her singularity.

By the way — Olivia’s Easter dress? Cost me $1.80 on clearance at the Thrift Store. I had admired it a couple of times before, but was never willing to pay its regular price of $9.

Apparently, neither was anyone else.

It would be really easy to use the excuse of my camera breaking to go out and buy a new one. I’ve had my sights set on a nice digital camera for… oh, just about forever now. I remember salivating over the Nikon D40 when it was the latest and greatest, however long ago that was.

But the first thing I felt when my camera finally broke? (It’s been trying to for awhile now.) — Was annoyance. Because I’m not ready to indulge in a new one just yet — certainly not the new one I’d like to have. Oh, it’s on my list of wants, that’s for sure. But I can’t justify it as a priority want — yet. Soon, though. Soon…

Any recommendations? I’m looking at a Nikon D80. Although I’ve heard good things about Canon, too.

Car Repair

I’ll be taking the car in to someone tomorrow to check out the air conditioning. Hopefully, it just needs some freon. Or whatever that stuff is that makes the air… condition. That repair (maintenance?) will be on top of the repair I took the van in for right before we left. I haven’t even had time to blog about that bill yet.

*sigh*

I’m beginning to think our van just doesn’t like Kansas.

Rental Property

Remember how we recently rented out our rental property in Vegas? Right after the new tenants moved in, our property manager notified us that the water heater wasn’t working. Yea. So I’m thinking, “So much for our first rent check.”

Good news! We have enough money left over in our property management account from the last tenant’s security deposit to cover the $850 bill.

Of course, we no longer have that cushion in our account — leftover because the last tenants broke their lease and thus did not get their deposit back — but we also avoided having to pay for it out of our personal savings. Phew.

Auto Issues

The Hubs drives a ’99 Toyota 4Runner — when he’s not deployed, that is. I drive the lean, green, mean machine: aka, a 2002 VW Eurovan. Both of them are doing strange things right now. You might recall my mentioning that I am clueless about cars. Clueless.

I drove the Van today by the shop where we get the oil changed to tell them about this mystery (to me) light that’s been coming on now and then for the last two or three days, complete with a piercing buzzer-beep screaming at you, “Warning! Warning! Do not ignore this red light!”

Turns out the light’s for the coolant, which seems to be fine — at least the temperature gauge shows everything’s fine. So it’s probably some kind of electrical short. But what if it’s not? What if the gauge is malfunctioning?

That’s the gist of what the guys at the shop told me, anyway. They couldn’t actually know for sure without the light actually being, you know, on. Which it wasn’t at the time. Of course.

And it hasn’t come on again since. So maybe it is just one of those electrical flukes?

The 4Runner makes a really loud noise whenever you start it. It lasts about ten seconds and then stops. My best, completely uneducated guess, is that it’s the fan belt. Or just something to do with the fan. It sounds a bit cranky right when you turn off the engine, too, like when the engine is still cooling.

Have I mentioned I know nothing about cars?

So I need to get the 4Runner over to the Toyota place. And I need to call the VW dealer and see what they have to say. Normally, we would avoid them…  $$$ …. But the mechanic from the shop followed me out to the car and did a sort of between me and you thang that a dealer would be the best route to try first because they might actually know exactly what’s wrong right away, thus actually saving me in the long wrong from being charged by the hour for the regular shop to tinker a couple two hours or more.

Now I just need to figure out which of my friends to hit up to help me drop the cars off, one at a time, at the respective dealers. Or maybe the dealers will provide transportation for me to get back home? Sigh. Have I mentioned that The Hubs normally deals with this stuff? I’m feeling like such a rambling whiner. I think it’s time for him to come home now.

Yesterday I made the final payment on Debt #3, which was essentially our car loan.

Just as soon as I made it I started thinking about the next step:

• ROTH contribution?
• Build up Emergency Fund?
• Start tackling the Second Mortgage?

It wasn’t until later that I started thinking… When was the last time we didn’t have a car loan?

Good Lord in Heaven I think this is the first time!

Oh, we’ve had “paid-off” cars before — usually because of some creative financing that allowed a lien release, but we just moved the debt around and gave it a different name:

• A credit card with a great introductory rate
• some random, unsecured loan
• even a Home Equity Line of Credit (really, really dumb — don’t ever do that).

How Many Cars Have You Gone Through?

I’d be hard-pressed to even remember just how many cars we’ve gone through in our 15 years of marriage. Seven? Eight? No, definitely more than that. (Maybe ten?)

At least we have the excuse of moving overseas a couple of times, which pretty much guarantees some car turnover.

And I can’t recall a single. one. that we bought without borrowing money.

Oh, wait! We did buy one with cash! A trusty old used Beamer that The Hubs drove while we lived in Italy. We used the cash we got when he sold his old Maserati before we left the States. Yes, a Maserati. The Hubs loved that old money drain sweet thing.

But we still owed money for our 4Runner at the time, although technically it was “paid-off” and the debt was called something else. Still.

We Have No Car Loan!

For the first time. Ever. It’s a pretty good feeling! Now here’s to hoping we never have one again…

How about you? Have you always had a car loan? Never had one? (Do you lease?)

Take my polls, please!

This will be so fun. I think I’ve even set them up so only one vote per person (computer) will be allowed. But I’ve never done this before so you’ll have to let me know how it works. I’d love to hear about any car loan woes in the comments, too — as well as some inspiration for driving debt-free and only buying cars with cash. How did you do it? Please share!

(polls)

(polls)

(polls)

Getting the oil changed in our van ended up costing double the amount that I had (guessed) budgeted for it. Whoops.

Sure I could have asked The Hubs how much it usually costs, but I forgot. And when I sat down to geeky-crunch the budget numbers I figured $30 would be pretty close. Even though this van requires pricey synthetic oil because we want only the best for our baby VW Eurovans think they are high royalty and deserve only the best that money can buy and really don’t care that they’re sucking you dry I was still bummed about the $61.63 total.

I don’t think I was paying this much attention the last time we got the oil changed.

It Even Requires a Special Filter

It would have helped, though not by much, had I taken in the filter that The Hubs had already bought for the van and left on the shelf in the garage. He bought a filter for his car as well (a Toyota 4Runner) and left it on the shelf, too. That’s the one I grabbed. Whoops.

Luckily, when I made the appointment, I didn’t tell the guy I was bringing my own filter, so he already had one that was on its way from another part of town. No, we don’t take the van to a dealer to get the oil changed (do you?) which would cost heavens I don’t know how much more. And Goodyear doesn’t exactly have a run of VW Eurovans coming in for oil changes to warrant keeping a surplus of their filters on the shelf. That’s only a minor inconvenience in the long line of inconveniences that come from owning this highfalutin vehicle that we love and adore and wouldn’t trade for anything.

Actually, I do love driving it. I just hate what it costs to maintain it.

I Know Nothing About Cars

Really. Nothing. Grabbing the wrong filter is but a small token of my woeful lack of  know-how. I like to joke that I don’t need to know about these things because I’m married and that’s what husbands are for. Really, how pathetic. What if something happened to him? What if — just to throw something out there — he went away for several months and wasn’t available to help figure out a problem?

I know, I know… Lots of guys out there don’t know diddly squat about cars, either. But I have this theory about long-time married couples: the amount of knowledge that one of them has about a subject is inversely proportional to the amount of knowledge that the other one has on the same.

In other words, the more my husband knows about cars, the less I do. (The more I know about paying the bills, the less he does. The more I know about doing the laundry, the less he does. The more I know about mopping the floors… Oh, wait. I don’t do those, either.)

But I digress.

The thing is, I have absolutely no desire to improve my level of car knowledge and know-how, even when it comes to basic upkeep. I’m not proud of this, just being honest.

Important Life Skill

The Hubs takes it as his responsibility to impart (at least some) (and there’s a lot) of his car knowledge onto his children. I thank God for that. I know that, come the day when Conner so much as wants to back the car out of the driveway, he’ll already be getting tutored on the basic upkeep of the vehicle he’s driving. And Conner will be fine with that (whether he likes it or not) — he’s good with tinkering with things. His little brother, too, will be more than ready to learn all he can about cars from his dad, based on the amount of interest he already demonstrates by taking things apart because he’s trying to figure out how they work even though neither he nor anyone else is able to get most of these things back together again in wanting to know how things work.

As for Olivia… Well, the jury’s still out. I’m not trying to be sexist here; just being honest about my kids. I just hope she got more of her dad’s mechanical blood in her than mine. Regardless, I do hope that The Hubs imparts as much knowledge on to her as he does his boys (whether she likes it or not) — I really want her to have more of a hand-up in this area than I do: It can only benefit her in the future, and likely save her money. I see no reason why she couldn’t learn to change the oil herself… (although even The Hubs can’t change the oil in our Eurovan, I don’t remember the exact reason) (but it’s a sore spot). At the very least, I want her to learn enough so she knows she’s grabbing a filter for a 4Runner and not a Eurovan.

How about you ladies? Are any of you as pathetic as I am? Or do you knock about under the hood with the best of them?

]]> http://budgetsarethenewblack.com/2010/02/changing-oil-vw-eurovan-car-maintenance.html/feed 11 http://budgetsarethenewblack.com/2009/10/59.html http://budgetsarethenewblack.com/2009/10/59.html#comments Tue, 13 Oct 2009 23:58:00 +0000 jolyn http://budgetsarethenewblack.com/2009/10/59.html

Good news! The transmission didn’t fall out of the car! Or, you know. Whatever it is that transmissions do when they go kaput. So that’s a good thing. The actual damage?$277.57

In Other News – The Hubs’ on-again, off-again deployment is… On again! Gee, didn’t see this one coming.

But stay tuned. I’m sure it’ll be off again in a couple days.

I wish I were kidding.

I can’t watch my news’ shows because our satellite dish doesn’t work when it rains. My 4yo thought it would be fun to wipe my dry-erase calendar clean. I write things down so I don’t HAVE to remember. The Hubs just got home from work and said he thinks the transmission in his car is going out. “Just a few thousand dollars or so.”

I’m in complete denial about the car. Even though The Hubs knows cars and I… Well, I don’t. I’m still hoping that it’s something temperamental. Cars can be temperamental, can’t they? Maybe it doesn’t like the rain.

Deploy-Schmoy The good news is that the on-again, off-again deployment appears to be absolutely, for sure, without a doubt, off. At least for now. I am telling myself it is good news, even though it’s really just a delay of the inevitable, because I harbor no illusion that his number will not come up. And now it looks like it will come up sometime next year, our last year in Ohio. He got back from his last deployment just a few months before our last PCS, and it sucked rocks. I am not eager for a replay, especially with a house to put up for sale this time around.

You may think that all deployments are created equal, but they’re not. The one he was pegged for this January was a good one — as far as deployments go. Now it feels like his number’s back in the basket and could get drawn again for anything. Besides that, with deployments come financial perks! In my mind I was already spinning and weaving ideas of how those dollars would go toward our debt snowball and give us a real good start on our emergency fund. Not to mention we really, really, need a new mattress, a new laptop, a new desktop, for that matter…

And a new car? I beg to differ. I refuse to believe it.

Buy the way, this is Hubs’ car, not to be confused with the van we just put some $2000 into a month or so ago. Hubs’ car, at least, is paid off…

Remember Dave? In other, sort-of-related news… Remember the couple we went with to see Dave in Indianapolis? They thoroughly enjoyed themselves — drank themselves some of that kool-aid, so to speak. They’re even one-up on us and looked up one of Dave’s financial ELPs (Endorsed Local Providers) and are meeting with him this weekend. They are a military couple as well, and he is deploying next month, for a year. They’re going to cash in their whole life insurance; sell his (paid-off) car before he leaves; they’re even stopping their retirement contributions so they can go full-force on their snowball.

I am so excited for them. I just hope their momentum sustains them through this deployment and carries on through whatever else comes up. Because come up it will. We seem to be proof of that.

August’s Progress

• Debt #1 Balance in April: $2260.17
• *Still Paid Off* (wOOt!)
  
• Current Balance: $00.00

• Debt #2 Previous Balance: $389.09
• PAID OFF!
• Current Balance: $00.00

• Debt #3 Previous Balance: $10,270.55
• Paid minimum balance of $68.00…
• and an extra $400.55
• Current Balance: $9,802.00

Previous Grand Total: $10,659.64

Current Grand Total: $9,802.00

You might say our debt eradication took a beating in August. It’s a bit ironic, because our final non-mortgage debt, Debt #3, is for our van. And our van is what did us in.

Just before our trip to Kansas, where our van broke down and cost us $1041.55 to repair, we had invested $986.64 in van maintenance: new tires; wheel alignment; front light bulb…

For a whopping total of $2028.19 just in van maintenance and repair in the last five weeks alone.

All things considering, it’s a wonder we were able to make any headway on our debt at all.

Debt #3

We bought our van within days of arriving in Ohio almost two years ago exactly. We moved to Ohio from Italy, and while still in Italy, The Hubs researched used vans online and had narrowed down a few for us to look at once we arrived in Ohio.

For those of you not familiar with the military, or of moving overseas in general, it’s a bit of a complicated matter to ship cars hither and yon. The military does provide shipment for one vehicle per family, but you’re on your own beyond that.

Before moving to Italy, we had sold one of our cars (actually, we sold two cars, because we had three. Doesn’t everybody?) (Ooh, that might be a future post.) (Maybe a good one for The Hubs to write?) (Hi, Hubs!) We bought a second car when we arrived in Italy, and before leaving Italy we sold that same car. This is quite common for American military members to do upon arriving and leaving overseas’ bases, so there are lots of used vehicles to choose from when you arrive, and lots of incoming customers when you leave.

Anyway.

So we shipped the one vehicle, weeks and weeks before we left Italy. But it takes weeks and weeks, and even more weeks, before it gets there. And they don’t exactly deliver it right to your door. In fact, once it arrived The Hubs had to drive to St. Louis to get it — the nearest “port” to Ohio.

So not only did we need another car when we got to Ohio, we needed it right away. We decided to finally get a van, now that we had three kids. By the time we left Italy, landed in Ohio, and woke up in our hotel room, only one of the vans The Hubs researched was left to even check out; the others had sold.

So we went to test drive the VW Eurovan we currently own, loved it, and took it home. Except we didn’t actually have a home yet. But you get what I mean.

All this to say that, we never would have bought this van had we known what we know now.

I love the van. I love driving the van, to be exact. But it’s too high maintenance for us financially. It requires premium octane gas, parts are hard to come by, and The Hubs can’t even change the oil.

But hindsight’s 20/20, and all that. So we’re keeping the van, at least for now (much to The Hubs’ chagrin) . Because we also bought a house when we moved to Ohio, which used all our cash, we had to take a loan out for the van. When we decided to get serious about this debt snowball, I paid off the van loan using a 0% APR transfer offer with a credit card that’s good for 12 months. That was four months ago. Barring any horrible, unforeseen emergency, we will have that paid off before the offer runs out, God willing.

…and it ain’t pretty. Our van needed a new starter. The total cost of the repair?

$1041.55! Ooch.

Cost breakdown:

• Labor: $249.50
• Parts: $546.72
• Towing: $157.00
• Repair Order: $17.47
• Sales Tax: $70.86

It was sooo good to get our van back and get back on the road. I think our greatest fear was that the problem would end up being something other than a bad starter — after waiting four days for that part to arrive.Here The Hubs is hamming it up just before we left Kansas. But don’t let him fool you — he was as mad as a hatter. Mad enough to spit nails. Fit to be tied, I tell you.

The cost of the starter up there? $546.72? That one came from a dealer, one of only four starters left in this country for this van. Um, huh?

After the car had been towed, the starter ordered, and we were just waiting, The Hubs found one online for less than $200. But it was a re-manufactured starter (whatever that means) so you would need to order it and put it on yourself or have Joe-Bob down the alleyway do it for you. Only this van doesn’t let just anyone work on it and we don’t know any Joe-Bob.

So that leaves us where we started this post, with a $1041.55 car repair bill. That’s going to put a bit of a damper on our debt reduction for the month, I tell you what.

But it could be so, so much worse. It always can be, right? Like this accident we passed in Missouri, just outside of Kansas City. It held up traffic on both sides of the interstate; we sat there for a good 45 minutes ourselves. We knew whatever was up ahead couldn’t be good when we saw the Life Helicopter flying in.These people looked a bit shell-shocked, but at least they’re still standing. The guy driving this truck wasn’t so lucky.
I’m hoping that our insurance will reimburse us for our $157 tow job… but I think the towing for his truck will be the least of that driver’s worries.