Last Wednesday Momma was in a town 40 miles away and had her suv break down, leaving her stranded. Great, especially since I was at home with a twisted ankle trying to get some bedrest. So I arranged a repair shop, arranged a tow truck and drove down to pick her and my son up and brought them home. I started hunting and pecking to see where we had any extra cash sitting around that could be used in addition to the emergency fund knowing things could be bad. The SUV in question is a 2000 chevy blazer with almost 100k on the odometer. So far it has been a great little SUV, very utilitarian, decent MPG, reliable and best of all, for several years now… owned free and clear.
I grew up around cars and worked on them for years, my gut is telling me based on the symptoms that it is either a bad torque converter (bad, expensive) or a blow tranny (really bad, horribly expensive).
I am really happy we set up the emergency fund (Learn how we make money online to help build our emergency fund here). In the beginning, I thought it was a waste of time, that the cash would be better spent paying down debts. Now because we socked some cash away for this kind of thing we at least have a healthy majority of the repair cost saved up. In the past we just would have slapped it on Amex and paid the minimums.
So the estimates have come in and the verdict is that we need to replace the transmission. A rebuilt unit with 3 year warranty and all the labor and fluids comes to a grand total of $2400. OUCH. I called around to 3 separate shops for quotes and they are all within about 100 dollars of each other. So it looks like the emergency fund is going to be drained and then some. I guess that’s life… manure happens.
Guess the extra principal payments/snowflaking to the mortgage is just going to have to wait a couple months until we build the E-Fund back up again.
L.Marie Joseph says
"…manure happens" LOL
Look at it this way, at least you HAD the money to fix the problem
supplymt26 says
Oh that's bad to hear. You never know when that rainy day is going to come.
Anonymous says
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Linda says
wow!! We are in the same boat. two of our cars broke down and our emergency has been depleted for a little while now. I am sure that its not gonna cost as much as yours but we are trying so hard to fix our finances..that this little set back feels like a HUGE set back.
Good luck and be grateful for your E fund.
Money Savin' Momma says
Thanks for the comments. I know these things happen, but it seems like they happen to us a lot more than other people.
I guess this just justifies the necessity of an e-fund.
Jaime says
Same thing happened to us this week. Something with the transmission and the total is over a thousand now. Also glad we had that e-fund!