Two months into our debt free journey the engine in our car died. We have always shared one car, from when we were dating until now. The same car I mentioned that was paid off in 2012. What were we to do at this point? At the time we lived a 5 min drive, 15 min walk from the seminary that Mr. HutchLife attended but it was a 35 min drive for me to work at the time. I don’t remember where we were when the car died but man did that throw a wrench in our journey, or so we thought.
We were fully committed to the debt snowball and all that we learned in Financial Peace University. We struggled with making a decision to either buy a car (take on a car payment), sell the car as is (with very little value at this point in time) and buy a beater until we finished the debt free journey or fix the car and put more money into the car than the car was worth. We went to car dealerships to see what our options were and test drove cars to see if there were any that we liked. I became a no nonsense saver when it came to our money, a change that happened during FPU, and I had a number in mind if we were to buy a car. Once the car salesman went above the number we shared I turned around and left, I didn’t negotiate.
We debated buying a new car because I needed transportation to get to work at the time and there isn’t any public transportation in this area. My job was very flexible with working from home, but I doubted I would want to be home for 2-3 months to save money to buy a car. We prayed about what to do, asked for clarity, and waited.
Out of the blue a very good friend of ours had to travel for work and was then going on vacation for 3 weeks. He said we could use his car while we he was traveling. PRAISE GOD!!! Answered prayer. We had 3 weeks to figure out what to do. We weighed our options:
1. Take on a car payment going against everything we learned in FPU
2. Buy a beater to take us through the rest of the journey which could mean having to fix the beater if it broke down and put more money into it that we wanted to
3. Purchase a new engine for our car and keep the car until it no longer ran
At the three week mark we received our annual bonus from work and we used for Option 3. We weighed our options and putting the new engine in our car was cheaper than taking on a car payment for a year and cheaper than purchasing a beater that we may have to fix down the road. We put a brand new engine in our 2009 Toyota Corolla. To this day it is still running and we know it will be good for at least another 10 years if we choose to keep it that long. Trusting God and patience was the key to coming out of this particular situation without a car payment and without a beater. First obstacle overcome.
What obstacles have you faced along your journey? How did you deal with that obstacle and what was the outcome?
