This is my new used car. Why do i have a new used car? Well that’s a long story. Basically, with the world out of car parts, materials to fix things, and the supply and demand situation with enterprise dictating that you have to reserve a vehicle way in advance and pay over 200 dollars a day for the use of it….it was cheaper and simpler to buy a new car than try to rent while waiting for parts to fix the old one. I had to get back to work and the car i was waiting on needed parts that had to be found, purchased, shipped, and installed. There was also the question of how much i wanted to fix it…so that it would run or so that it would run me back and forth from city to city daily for my job.
It was a regular day. I had finished all my work, stopped at the grocery in fredericksburg for mayonnaise, pasta, and chocolate…the three things the produce warehouse didnt have so i regularly purchased at the little health shop there before i left for home on mondays or tuesdays. I believe it was a monday night. I always fill the tank back up when it’s at a quarter. I meant to fill it but since the gas light wasnt yet on there was no indicator to remind me and it slipped my mind. There is no gas station between fredericksburg and comfort so once i realized my error i had two choices…continue to the truck stop in comfort and gas up there or turn around and go back to fredericksburg. I knew i could make it to comfort on what the dial said i had, though it would be breaking my rule to never leave a city without more than a quarter tank of gas. So i continued on. About ten minutes after this decision the car shook a little and then it was as if i was driving a plastic toy with no batteries. It looked like a vehicle, rolled like a vehicle, but absolutely nothing happened when you pressed the acceleration pedal. So coasting, i had no choice but to pull over. I pulled over and parked. I called my car insurance roadside assistance. This incident was the last straw after a long string of incidents following the admitted layoffs of all their roadside employees in 2020 when the pandemic began. I ended up cancelling my roadside assistance after this because its just non existent and they shouldnt be able to charge people for it. Firstly, you can no longer talk to a human. They have a robotic voice and you must do everything from file a claim to receiving updates on the website and via bot generated texts. Secondly, if you are crafty enough to obtain a human their customer service is just akin to sewage. Just raw toilet contents. They werent expecting to have to interact with people today and it shows, both in their deductive reasoning and cause and effect recognition skills and their ability to conversate without mocking or ridiculing the customer that is paying for the abuse, oh im sorry i mean service.
When i pulled over there were no lights on when i looked at the dash. I know this because i was actively looking for the source of the problem: why the car wouldnt go. Typically when the car ceases to work, the first investigatory step to take is consult the dash and see if any lights are on. Is it out of gas? Engine trouble? Oil change needed? Blown tire? So i do that and there’s nothing. I get out and walk around the car, kick all four tires, listen for air escaping. Nothing. The tires are good. This is an internal issue. Now i look at the gas situation. Am i out? The gas light is not on. It still says i have a little over an eighth of a tank. That should be enough to get to the truck stop. I mean its cutting it close but im not empty. While im staring at the blank dash that says only that i dont have my seatbelt on and the passenger airbag is off because no one is sitting there, two lights come on. A red oil can shaped like a genie lamp and a yellow icon of an engine. Im not delusional, these things were not on until i sat by the side of the road for a bit trying to figure this out. When the engine light came on i thought it best to turn the car off and minimize any damage i had already done. The oil light made sense. I hadnt had an oil change in a while and i was probably low on oil with all the driving i did, but i was worried for a particular reason. I had to exit the tractor supply parking lot in fredericksburg about a week ago and it exited onto a highway where cars were driving highway speeds. Now they were paving this road and they had new tar laid down and then they’d left a 3/4 ft gap between the new tar and the parking lot. It was a two inch step down to the dirt between the parking lot and new tar on the highway. My car might as well have had a wreck the way it entered that highway. I mean unless you are a stunt driver, how the heck are you supposed to make the transition without falling in the dirt gap? It was enough of a challenge to enter at speed but to leave starting from zero was not something i knew how to accomplish and so i didnt. I pulled over and examined the underside of the car. I didnt see any visible damage but it did not put my mind at ease. Its dark under the car and what can you really see peering in from the side. The mechanic later revealed there was not a drop of oil in the tank and the gas was also gone as well. Ultimately it took a lot of arguing for me to get the mechanic to believe me that there was an electrical problem because they assumed the indicators told the truth, that the gas icon, engine and oil icon must have all been on and i just drove it to its death for kicks and giggles. My dash said i had an eighth of a tank of gas and neither the oil nor the engine light were on until after i sat on the side of the road trying to figure out what was the problem. The mechanic’s right hand man asked me “where the f*ck was your husband and why the f*ck did he let you drive the car like this, like what the f*ck was he doing?” And i said, “no no, that’s not a thing nor will it be, i’ve been celibate for the last ten years and intend to stay that way until im 90.” This made the mechanics right hand man super angry, he took that statement more personal than i expected, as if i had insulted mankind and the rightful order of things. It was a pretty icy transaction after that. They treated me like i was a dumb bimbo and expressed the importance of putting gas in the car if i wanted to make it go. I held my tongue because they didnt charge me what they should have and because the mechanic was cindy’s friend and well respected in the community. I will not be returning. Im so f*cking tired of that question. When a man enters the grocery store i dont inquire as to his marital status and then ask him why the f*ck his wife let him come up in here without a list or any knowledge of the layout of the store. I dont launch into a long winded monologue about why men shouldnt be allowed to do solo grocery trips because they botch everything up and dont know what theyre doing. I just help them. I dont accept the “if you dont want to be property of your husband move back to the city” stance that i encounter with the more old fashioned faction of the population out here at times. I recently found a black and white photograph of the first single woman homesteader to stake a claim on land out west during the time of the Oregon trail. She traveled there, built her own cabin, planted her own food, raised her own animals, and married for companionship 10 years later. So dont tell me this is a new concept. Its been around over 100 years. Yall we cant all be finches and sparrows. You gotta throw a flamingo in there every so often to keep it interesting. Diversity. Its good for you.
So now i call my insurance and i say im stranded and ask for somebody to come take me to the truck stop to pick up oil. The insurance says they will send me someone with oil and i will just have to pay for it. Great. They call back half an hour later and tell me this service is not available in my state. Let me say my phone began on 29 percent battery and my insurance company ran it down calling and calling back to tell me they couldnt help or they couldnt find anybody or they couldnt provide something and finally my phone was at 6 percent. I requested a tow. Over the course of an hour and a half they called me every thirty minutes to tell me they still couldnt find me a tow but i was welcome to leave the vehicle if i just put it in neutral and left it unlocked. I explained that it could not be put in neutral (apparently theres a way even when its locked up but its not a way they were interested in teaching me at the time they just said turn the car on and put it in neutral…which ended up being a thing i could not achieve once the car was turned off). I told them its stuck in park. I told them the car automatically locks if the key fob gets twenty feet away from the car and i only have one key and was not leaving it in the car unlocked on the side of the road with all my stuff in it. I told them the other reason i couldnt leave the car was because i was in the middle of nowhere and it was a ten mile walk to the nearest business. She said, “ma’am, i dont know why you’re upset. I’m still not understanding how you needing a tow equals you not being able to go home. I already told you you can leave the car. We don’t need you to be at the car for us to tow it.” I said, “BECAUSE THE CAR THAT NEEDS TOWED WAS MY RIDE HOME!” I tried to explain to her that in the middle of nowhere you cant just hail a taxi but she wasnt getting it so i gave up on making her understand. I needed to wait for the wrecker because the wrecker would be my makeshift taxi back to civilization. I dont know why that was such a hard concept to grasp. I told her i was in the middle of nowhere between cities where there were no businesses. Even if this person had never been to such a place, im sure they would have seen the concept on television. I tried to hitchhike for about an hour with my thumb up beside the road. Not one taker. Nevermind that it was a dangerous idea cuz you dont know who is going to stop…i couldnt even get to that part. Nobody stopped. I had to pee something fierce so i used my knife to cut the top off a gallon jug of spring water, emptied it in the grass, got in the car, used my emergency roll of toilet paper, and peed in the half of a gallon jug, then emptied it in the grass. I gave up on keeping the chocolate and mayonnaise from melting. At this point my battery was at 6 percent and i started thinking i should tell someone where i am so they know where to look for me if i dont show up to work tomorrow. I texted my boss. I told him the car was dead and i was stranded on 87 traveling southbound 9.5 miles from comfort. I told him my battery in the phone was on 6 percent, the insurance wasnt being helpful arranging a tow, and i just wanted somebody to have my location, and if i didnt show up to work tomorrow, thats probably where i still was. My boss, bless his heart, got in his car and came to get me. I had to tell him to turn around because at this point a couple things the insurance asked me to do let me know putting oil in the car wouldnt fix this, the engine was busted, and then i really needed to wait for a wrecker because it wasnt a situation where my boss could just drive me to LOVES truck stop to pick up oil and drive me back to the car. But he is a good boss and if you were stranded he’d come get you, any one of us, and that’s why i work for him. This privately owned company thinks of people as people, not as numbers on a page.
Now the sun had set. I started thinking about getting back in the car. I was in a less populated area than where i lived and the cars came once in a while now…not too many people on the road. I started thinking that i would want to be in the car if a mountain lion was going to come out and hunt for dinner. So i put my things back in the dead car and climbed in. It was quiet. Dark. My battery was at 6 percent. Luckily i had the camping lantern i use to get from the house to the car every morning with me. I turned that on. It was 9 pm when my insurance called again, my battery at 6 percent, to tell me they couldnt arrange a tow, that all the services they used were closed, and they would try again in the mornjng. I was like, gee i hope you’re more effective and useful in a collision situation than you are at roadside because if this is the service across the board, what the heck do i pay you for? I got upset with her that they had run down my battery and wasted all this time when i could have been calling friends and trying to arrange something and i had someone coming to get me but i told him no because i was waiting on them to arrange the wrecker. She said with about 115 percent attitude and sass in her voice, “well you are welcome at any time to arrange your own tow and just keep the receipt so we can reimburse you later.” I was like, mind blown. First of all, if that was an option why didnt we do that in the first place? Second of all, if you’re telling me you cant find a tow and i can, what does that say about your abilities and skill set? What are you for then? The first 24/7 tow service i called answered, confirmed they could get me, took my location, and said they were on their way. He came to get me and i hitched a ride back to my town in the wrecker. My friend Cindy arranged for her friend Leo with a mechanic shop in my town to accept the car. The wrecker put my car on his truck and we set out back towards food, electricity, and lights. Away from mountain lions and the absence of a toilet. Boy was i glad to be heading back towards home. At this point the dogs had been locked in their crates with pee pads since 4:17 am. i was thankful they at least had pee pads but i was not happy about that. I had to get home. I would have to come to work saturday to make up for tuesday because tuesday i would have to spend obtaining a car. The mechanic in my town was pretty sure i busted the engine and it would be a while before he could get it running again. The guy driving the wrecker had a good conversation with me about God and faith and timing. He shared some about miraculous things in his life and i shared some about mine. You never know when you’re going to end up in the right place at the right time to say something someone needed to hear. My friend Cindy arrived and said i could borrow her car if i drove her back to comfort. We let the dogs out, i put them back in, i drove Cindy back to comfort and then took her car back to my town. It was very generous of her because there was a waiting list for enterprise cars. You couldnt, on the spot, rent one.
Not sure where to put this tidbit so i’ll just leave it here. My insurance company came back and tried to deny covering the cost of the tow because i sent them a screenshot of a cell phone texted invoice from the wrecker and they wanted a faxed paper one. I said he wasnt walking around in the wrecker with a printer and fax machine so no i dont have that invoice on paper. Then i launched into the story of how they ran down my phone battery to 6 percent, never arranged a tow, and left me stranded for four hours until it became dark and i had to arrange my own tow at 9:30 at night. So i said they wouldnt have to go with a wrecker with a cell phone invoice if they had found one themselves at all in those four hours they wasted. They said they needed an itemized list of all the things he had charged me for and all they had was one lump fee. I answered, “well i could be wrong but i think thats the one lump fee for loading, driving, and unloading my car from fredericksburg to center point.” She said, “right, and we need to see his fee for the loading, a separate fee for the driving, and another fee for the unloading.” Apparently they wanted to pay for the miles driven but not the loading and unloading. The representative said they would pay for 100 of the 145 dollars to tow it.
So, Monday night i spent eating the bag of oven french fries i had picked up from the dollar general right before they closed and drinking the diet dr pepper i was trying to use to calm my nerves. I then began formulating my plan. Tuesday morning i called my mechanic in austin and a male family member and picked their brain about car vocabulary and car buying phrases like “pre purchase inspection”. I ate one banana and then i set about finding a mechanic i trusted in kerrville. That proved to be difficult and ultimately half of the reason i left kerrville to find a car in the end. I couldnt find one i trusted but i found one that would agree to perform a pre purchase inspection and had a five star review and a bunch of satisfied customers. He seemed like a good dude. He had a very small operation, one employee besides himself, and he looked like santa claus. He was an old german man with an inviting smile. I was skeptical of all humans so it took me a while to warm up to him but ultimately he was straight with me even when it was his friends and business associates he was assessing and he gave me solid advice. On top of that he refused to charge me a penny for either inspection. So i decided if i had any trouble with the car i bought id bring it to him as a thanks…but that didnt work out because of a condition of a lifetime warranty on the engine and transmission i signed in the end that says i will have it serviced by the dealer every time the little booklet says i need to. But ultimately he was buds with the car salesman across the street and he bought parts from the ford dealer i was looking at the other car at and still he was straight with me and told me the four major things wrong with his friend’s car and told me that when the ford dealership didnt want me to take the car to him to get it looked at they were probably hiding something. They did let me take the car over across the street in the end but they had one of their teenage employees drive it there. They didnt trust me to do it. He stayed with me the whole time and tried to make awkward small talk. The mechanic said it was the cleanest car he’d seen. I was surprised by this answer since they hadnt wanted me to inspect it and was somewhat worried about him buying parts from ford, would he be telling me the truth…. I also wanted to speak with him without the ford employee teenager watching his every word so i sent the teen and the car back to the ford dealership and said id be right behind him. Then i asked the mechanic his full opinion and he said its a clean car. No major problems, never would believe there were 81,000 miles on it. Then he told me for the mileage what they want for it is too high, which i knew already according to kelly blue book. I would have to negotiate them down. The ford people were the slimiest salesmen bullies there must be in existence and i was worried about the likelihood of me winning a negotiation with them. These people were cut throat, mean, and just pretty much straight liars. They told me ppi’s were not allowed and then they made a special allowance for just me just this one time but acted like i was a naughty school child in time out for asking for such a thing. The woman trying to sell me the car flat out said, “so you want it?” And i said “its a nice car it drives real smooth and i love subarus but im not going to want the car today.” And she said, “what? Why?” And i said, “well i just couldnt in good conscience buy a used car without having a mechanic i trust take a look at it.” She asked, “what do you think a mechanic is going to find? I mean i told you its a good car no problems, what do you think a mechanic is going to find that we didnt find?” I said, “no offense but you’re selling me the car. You have motive to omit negative information if there is any. I cant just take your word.” She put on her most sincere disappointed face and it was so dramatic that it should have been criminal to do it and she said, “well i think that is really sad, im serious, i really do. I think that is just really sad that that is the way you view the world.” Sigh. You can buy a car as a single woman. You can. It can be done. But its exhausting. And sometimes i think it would be a whole lot easier to just bring a male with me because something happens when they see a single young female by themselves. They’re like sharks that smell blood in the water and they begin circling. You’ll spend your entire day beating them about the nose with boat oars until they realize you’re not an easy snack and back off. They dont expect you to have any brains, sense, or knowledge…so you have to do research ahead of time and pick mechanics brains and put a plan together and such. Well, i did want that subaru, but ultimately i knew that woman and both of her male colleagues that were also trying to get me to buy the car had spent over an hour bullying me and wearing me down, including forcing me to park the car back on the display when we were done with the test drive and then ridiculing my driving and parking skills telling me i drove like a timid granny during the test drive and i needed to go back to drivers ed to learn how to park the thing on the display and i said why dont you do it, you know how you would like to display the car and she refused. Thats a tactic. They were wearing me down and bullying me so i’d sign whatever they put in front of me in the end and go home feeling crap about myself. I didnt see any negotiation on price going my way with these people. They were agressive. I needed a different scene and new people. I wasnt going to win that. So i made them sweat for 45 minutes while i sorted my finances and talked logistically about a plan. I made them sweat because theyd made me park the car on the display and i felt i should even the score a bit in case i ended up coming back for the subaru. So then i walked in and told them the mechanic said it was a fairly good car but i was going to go up to boerne to check out a nissan over there and compare the two. The lady said, “you’ll be back. You’re not going to like that car as much as you do this one.” Thats when i knew i couldnt buy a car from her. It would kind of kill my soul to do so. There are car salesmen and then there are car salesmen. And she is a car salesman. So i went up to boerne and looked at the nissan. They were having a lawsuit over faulty transmissions and my first question was is that the transmission in this car. They didnt answer the question but skirted around it so i knew the answer. There was a problem with every kind of car i looked at and researched and at some point i had to accept there are no sure thing cars out there anymore. My last honda had shrapnel in the airbag that could have killed me but it defected and didnt go off, thank God. The Kia ended up part of a lawsuit over engine fires. The subaru had a host of problems listed on the internet and the nissan had a lawsuit over the transmission. Every other car i researched was the same. The nissan came with a lifetime warranty for engine and transmission issues. They didnt fix it in the newer model cars. They continued using it, they simply drew up a contract that says we fix it when it breaks as long as you own the car. But i knew better. I wasnt born yesterday. There would be a host of things i could do or not do as the buyer to make that contract null and void and i wanted it in writing what those things were and as long as i did a, b, and c, they owed me that lifetime warranty and there was nothing else unlisted that could render the contract null and void. It took me two hours and at one point i got up and left, and i wasnt bluffing i told them they could take their car and shove it and i meant what i said. I had resigned myself to walk away at 9 pm at night after 12 hours of car shopping with no car because they were being slimy car salesmen and i wasnt going to sign stupid shit, i had a list of demands and if they couldnt meet them they could find themselves a new owner for that car because i didnt need it that bad. My friend cindy let me borrow her car indefinitely, as long as i needed to find another car, and so i kept that in mind. Ultimately the thing that helped me in the end was i had had 1 banana all day. It was 9 pm. I was so hangry at that point that i was telling it like it was and sparing nobody’s feelings. I had fire in my eyes and venom in my words and i had no problem spelling it out in plain english. The salesman had a manager and the salesman is a well groomed young attractive man that the company sets out there to hook a buyer and he talks all nice and markets the car and reels you in and then you sit down in a chair and a middle-aged greasy haired fat man in a suit with this sly grin and amusement in his eyes comes and invades your space. He hangs on your chair and gets right up close to you and just invades space. He hands you a pen and demands repeatedly that you sign sign sign sign sign, just sign. All three of the people present talk at you at once and the big greasy guy lingers in your space and says again and again, pointing at the page with nothing but the vehicle description and a drawn on x and lign, says to sign here, sign here and we will get the process started. I first moved the man out of my space by letting him know if he moved any closer we’d be wearing the same outfit and he could kindly remove himself from where i was sitting. He backed up a few steps. I told them i wasnt going to be signing anything while they were all talking at once, that was a sell tactic to confuse and stress the buyer into doing whatever they wanted and i could smell them from a mile away so they could just cut it out and be straight with me. Then i addressed the greasy guy with his drawn on line and the paper and let him know that i wouldnt be signing my name to a paper with nothing written on it. What was on the paper? The picture and description of the car and a drawn line next to an x. I wasnt accustomed to signing papers they could write anything on later. If i was going to sign something the thing would need to be typed up on computer in a professional font, nothing handwritten or informal, and it would have to say something because i would need to read in plain sight what i was signing i wasn’t just going to be taking their word as to what the heck it said or was going to say. If they werent trying to pull shady shit they would have no problem with it saying upfront in plain type what it was going to say and as for getting the process started, i was in no hurry, i had time, and i’d wait for them to type it. I told them, “if you’re going to sell me the car then sell me the car but dont hand me a blank piece of paper with a line drawn on that says nothing and expect me to sign.” The young man with the 100 dollar shave and hair blow out said, “ma’am, we want your business, not just for this transaction but for life. We wouldn’t try to pull one over on you because we want you to be so satisfied that we have your business for life.” I crossed my arms and swung my foot raising an eyebrow, “they all say that.” He looked astonished. He said, “what i just said? Really? They all say that?” I looked at him, surprised he needed me to elaborate, “the thing about wanting to sell me multiple cars, no just this one, but every car i buy from now on, my lifelong business, yeah, they all say that. Its a sell tactic, a strategy.” He fiddled with something on the desk and stated, “i guess they all have the same training.” I was amused. I was beginning to realize there was a possibility that he really did think nissan had a much better approach than ford and that made him less of a snake for being a car salesman. Sorry. You’re all salesman. If i hadnt been so hangry i might have cared more about the feelings of the people i was dealing with but i was in full blown hangry bitch meltdown nuclear mode and anyone in between me and the obtaining of food was getting verbally laid out at this point. They tried to drag the process out saying they had to go talk to people and okay things and see if this was okay and that was okay and i asked them if it was their first day selling a car, if they werent sure of what their policy on things were ahead of time and who it was in what department that they were going to go consult to see if they could take a down payment and a cashier’s check rather than do financing. That should be a yes or no question. This shouldn’t be a prolonged research project to see if they can allow this. I said that they were just stalling so i’d give in to their demands which was not going to happen and i wanted to know when they were going to address my demands for things typed up and not written, a bullet point list of the things i had to do to keep the lifetime warranty on engine and transmission valid, a bullet point list of everything covered in the five year warranty and any buyer requirements to hold onto this, and our agreement in writing that i would be paying for the car with down payment and cashier’s check and not financing. They eventually came to some ridiculous compromise that they would write that i had three days to bring the cashier’s check and if i did they would cancel the financing they signed me up for. I told them i would agree to this on the condition that they put all my demands i had written on a piece of paper in writing and had me sign them and their finance person that was drawing them up sign them. So they did. The greasy man then whisked the papers away and put a bunch more papers in front of me and i said “you’re going to give me a copy of those papers i just signed to keep right?” And he said yeah yeah we’ll get you a copy. And i said good you get me a copy of those papers i just signed to hold in my hand and i’ll fill out the rest of these. We had another hour long standoff. At this point everyone had gone home so i knew the “people” they were going to consult as to whether they could meet my demands werent there. In the end i guess they wanted to go home too because the finance guy came and shook my hand, handed me the papers i asked for, and finished walking me through the rest, which i insisted upon reading even though the greasy guy wanted to give me his own summary of what each one said. The young man with the pretty hair and shaped beard stated repeatedly that he was not involved in any of this and i told him to stop squirming because i didnt blame him but i was also not born yesterday and they could sell me the car or not but i wasnt going to take their word on things without it in writing. I watched his face oscillate between amused, nervous, and trying on big boy shark pants throughout the process. The guy in a dress shirt was just mad he had to stay late and come out of his office and get his hands dirty in a deal that wasnt his job to close. The guy in the suit was just greasy as **** and had probably lost his soul long ago. The guy with the poofy hair wasn’t dead inside and was still learning to sell cars as he forgot what to say a couple times and the greasy guy had to remind him of how to start the process. He seemed a bit thrown off by the fact that this business deal started with him waiting for me to come out of the ladies room. I had driven a long way and wanted to pee and they wanted to do some ritual meet at curb shake hand thing and i didnt do that because by golly i was going to pee, out of my way. So the day was going strangely for the young man. I wondered what kind of a person could do this job. It didnt seem like a person with empathy would do well here. If he was a decent person i hoped this was just a stepping stone to college and if he wasnt then he was right where he was supposed to be. Not all car salesman are like this. Sometimes the “as is” car salesmen are straight forward with you because what they are selling is “as is” and they can afford to be. But when buying from a dealer it is best to be hangry because that way they cant manipulate your emotions or confuse you and you wont have to channel much effort into achieving max bitchiness. The one banana thing was a good idea. At the first lot i set off the panic alarm and revealed i didnt know how to turn on and off cars with a push button and no key. At the ford place i just was outmatched with aggressive bitchy energy and wouldnt have won that argument. The ford people would have told me the sky was purple and held me hostage in an office until i agreed with them. But by the time i got to boerne i was hungry and angry enough and had already figured out the push start situation and managed to not set off the panic alarm upon arrival. I bought a car at 9:30 pm with everything i wanted in writing in hand. They then insisted i take it off the lot immediately. I told them i couldnt as i had my friend cindy’s car. They refused to keep it and decided to park it outside the gate. I called my friend cindy. She was awake. I had to come get her in comfort and she drove me back in her car to boerne so i could drive my new car to center point. When the young one parked the car at a stop sign outside the nissan gate i said, “wait a minute. People are going to see this a mile away and know its out of place. Also cant you get a ticket for parking directly in front of a stop sign?” The guy said, “i have an idea.” He parked the car up on the nissan display platform outside the gate. It would just be viewed as another displayed car but i would take the key and come back for it. I said, “good thinking.”
Two days later i came back to boerne mid-day which meant staying at work till 8:30 pm to get my work done, but i came back to boerne and walked into nissan and handed them their cashier’s check. I wanted to know how they were going to handle getting me the title and registering the car and all the logistics so we talked through that and then they asked rather exhaustedly if there was any other paperwork i wanted. I told them i wanted a receipt, and a type statement that i was fully paid up on the car and owed nothing. The finance guy typed it up and them the young guy walked me out. He didnt seem sure how to end the transaction after asking me if i liked the car so i put my hand out to shake his and told him to have a good day. Then i walked to my car, got in, and drove away. I will not see the last of them. As a condition of my lifetime warranty i have to go see them every 5,000 miles for service (which was paid for in the service package…also a condition of holding onto the warranty) so i will see plenty of them, but nowadays all cars break and i’d rather have one we’re acknowledging is going to break and they have to fix when it does rather than it be my responsibility logistically and financially. So i paid the mechanic to fix the old car. When the parts came in he finally did. Its back on my land now. I will soon sell it and put that money back into the stock market. Its a world i’d rather not dabble in. I prefer concrete things that i understand. And the money is not my money. Im grateful to a couple relatives that put it into the market for me in case of emergencies/retirement and were willing to let it be used for this. Once i get what i get for the old car i’ll continue putting a portion of my paycheck back into the stock market as long as im making full time hours. I feel dedicated to putting back what they saved for me because it was for retirement and i dont want to take advantage. It’ll be like a car payment but without interest. And that is the story of how the old car broke, the new car was found and bought in 12 hours, i made up for taking tuesday off by coming to work on saturday, the old car got fixed, i now have 17,000 miles on a vehicle vs 119,000, the phone charger in it works, and i learned its important to be hangry when negotiating.