Happy Friday the 13th! Today was an expensive day but it also happened to be the day that I received my yearly ‘big’ bonus at work. I was looking over my pay stub and comparing it to the memory of my first job. Including my profit sharing bonus from last month, and my manager’s bonus from today; in the first 10 weeks of the year I’ve grossed nearly 4 times what I made in a year’s time working 20-25 hours a week as a bagger at the grocery store when I was 16. I am going to be 35 this year after all, I should be at this level. Anyhow, my economy is doing just fine despite the nay-sayers that claim we are in a recession. I’ve had more disposable income in the past 2 years than at any point in my life. I’m nearly debt free (except for the still massive school loan that won’t ever go away), I’m single with no dependents, I have no social life, and I spend almost all of my time either at work or sleeping. Guess it makes sense right? It stands to reason that I would have money if I don’t have time to spend any of it.
So anyhow, thank God for the bonus. For the past week I’ve been driving my car listening to this horrible grinding coming from my worn out breaks. I pulled in to Midas today and told the guy at the counter that as soon as they remove the lug nuts from the tires, I fully expect the tires to shoot off the axle and for my breaks to throw up on his floor. Not far from what happened really. I had to replace both front rotors and both front calipers because everything I had was completely gone. My previous break job lasted me 3 years and I had them replaced 3 years prior to that. In short, history suggests that on this car, I can expect my breaks to last at most 3 years. I’m still on the original set of rear breaks but for a front wheel drive car, that’s not unusual. $500 bucks POOF. And I’m not done yet.
The other problem I have with the car is a loud humming noise, almost a grind but not really. Turns out I am going to have to have both of my front wheel bearings replaced. I’m pretty sure that I’ve had to do that before but I won’t be able to wait on this one too long. They are both shot and the noise won’t go away and my ABS light won’t go off until I fix them. Another $300 bucks each including labor POOF. I’m going to try and get that done this next Thursday.
So, out of my pocket and then into someone else’s. I work AND spend to make other people rich. My life in a nutshell. It’s impossible to live in this part of the country without a car. In Grand Rapids, I could get away with it, especially because Jirar had a car that was in good shape and I lived on the bus route. Up here, I can’t even walk to a store and I certainly can’t walk 30 miles on rural roads out to the Cottage. I’m going to have to start considering the long term here. My car is a 1999 so it’s 10 years old this year. I’ve got 150000 miles (almost exactly) on the thing. The engine still works well but I know it’s not too terribly far from death. Anyone care to bet me a down payment on a new car that I can push this baby for 200000 miles? I need to. It will be that long before I can save enough to buy something decent. I can’t complain too much. Aside from my beloved VW Fox that I had during most of my 20′s (I will forever be partial to VW’s), this car has done well for me. In the 6 years I’ve had it, I’ve put on nearly 71000 miles (mostly due to 3 years of driving 65 miles round trip to work at least 5 days a week) and I’ve had fun driving it. We’ll see what the future holds.
