November: The Month of the Car Repair?

Remember back at the beginning of November when I said that it was going to be the month of the freezer meal?  Well, it turns out that was a good thing I have a stocked freezer since we had several hundred dollars in unplanned car maintenance and repairs over the past month.

Without going into too much detail, it all started when D's car failed the yearly state inspection, which is required for renewing the registration.  We followed that with a flat tire repair on my car which resulted in a "sidewall failure"* a few days later and us needing to buy a whole new tire for my SUV.   If you've ever bought tires for an SUV, you know those babies ain't cheap!  Did I mention that we were 200 miles into the drive back to Hometown, USA when this all went down?  Oh, I also forgot to mention that AJ decided she was ready to potty train a mere 5 days before we embarked on the 16 hour road trip.  Sound like fun yet?

Just when I thought we were done with all the car shenanigans, on November 30, I spent the early morning hours preparing myself and a toddler for an outing to the post office, grocery store and lunch only to walk out to a car with a completely dead battery (or so I thought).  Two roadside assistance claims, a tow truck and the weekend later, we are replacing the starter as well as the power steering hose.

Now, things could be much, much worse.  Like thousands of dollars worse.  But still.  I wasn't planning to drop a G on repairing our cars this month.

All in all, I am feeling very woe-is-me today, and am attempting to rectify this by bringing you all down with me, obviously.  I think its the combination of everything hitting all at once that is really getting to me.  With Christmas fast approaching and a baby on the horizon in 2013, I feel that there is way more month than money right now, and I hate feeling that way.

On a more serious note, I want to explain that at the beginning of 2012, we committed to living the Dave Ramsey method of money management and debt reduction.  Up until now its gone really, really well.  We have paid a lot of debt off and still managed to have a bit of fun.  We've been able to manage a few emergencies (Murphies) without touching our actual "emergency fund" until now.  I can't express enough how glad I am that we decided to follow this plan.  If we hadn't we'd be up a creek without a paddle right now.  Just the fact that we'll be able to pay cash for the necessary repairs without putting anything on credit this holiday season is a complete and total win for me.

So anyway, that is my little soapbox for today.  If you're interested in hearing more about our journey to becoming debt-free or the Dave Ramsey plan in general, please email me.  If you have any extra cash laying around that you want to donate to the "This American Wife" Car Repair fund, let me know, I'll gladly accept any and all donations.  ;)

*"sidewall failure" is the technical term that the super-professional mechanic/dairy queen worker at the gas station in VA gave us to describe the problem before informing us that he couldn't fix the problem (thank God!) and we'd need a new tire, which we could buy at Firestone, just down the road a few miles.