Boats, Trains, and Automobiles

 Some 15 years ago, my commute to the office was considerably different than most. At the time I lived in a Chicago suburb called Plainfield. Every morning I would drag myself to my car, force myself into the drivers seat, and drive to the train station in Joliet to take my commuter train downtown. There are a few previous blog entries about the train (nicknamed the Pickled Liver) and the people who were repeat offenders on said train. The train ride was one of the two highlights to my commute. 

Once arriving downtown, I would walk through Union Station to the ferry which would lazily move down the river toward Michigan Avenue where I disembarked. I climbed the stairs, crossed the river, and walked into my office building in Illinois Center. Every evening, I reverse the entire course. As you can probably imagine, during the winter the boat was left out of the process. But when the boats ran, it was fantastic. 

Today my commute during COVID is much more of a walk 15 steps to the living room. Before the lockdown, my commute was a 15-20 minute bus ride to the front door of my office building. I didn’t need a car. If we needed a car, we rented one from Zipcar or Getaround. In February though, we bought a used Jetta. We knew going in that this was not a forever purchase. The intention was to get a reliable enough car for trips to Target, classes, etc. until we upgraded to a newer car. We paid cash for it. It needed new tires so the first thing we did was replace them. 

Flash forward to now. The car has been acting up and we decided to take it to the garage to have them do a once over. The mechanic previously said there were a couple items that would likely need to be replaced like the timing belt. He estimated about $1000 for that repair. We had some small items that also needed repair like the daytime running lamp. 

Last night we picked up the car...

Between the rental car while it was getting repaired, and the repairs themselves, we are out of pocket about $4500. Before the decision was even made to repair the car, I suggested trading it in for another. The response I received was “I love my Flo (the cars name)”. If we would have traded in the car, blue book shows the trade in value between $3800 and $5300. Add the $4500 and we could have upgrade our car by 3 years. Three years would have avoided all of the repairs and headache. Oh, and... the drivers side running lamp did not get replaced, the perfectly functional headlight did... and we have to take it back because the entire reason for taking it in is still showing up on the dashboard as an issue. The splash guard for the underside of the engine was also removed and not replaced. I can see another $1000 going into this money pit. I should have listened to my inner voice. 

Yes, the repairs are still less than renting a car as we did before buying, but it just got a whole lot closer to breaking even. So if you get a chance to buy a car..buy a boat ticket instead.