What to do when your car breaks down...

 Up until recently I drove a 2 door '97 Pontiac Grand Am, her name was Gypsy Anne. She was a good car, good gas mileage, relatively comfy. No air conditioning and the heat left something to be desired. But she got me where I needed to go.

I noticed that she had started running a little hot, we added some coolant and that made her quiet down for about a week. Then we took her on our honeymoon. we honeymooned in the mountains....up a really steep hill.

The Monday after we came back I was driving to the dentist after work and she just keep over heating. So me, being the drama queen that I am went through these steps:

• Yelling at the car (didn't work)
• Crying trying to make it to a spot where I could pull over, I was convinced it was going to blow up on me.
• Finally pulled over.
• Called my dad.
• Quickly realized "oh I'm married now and my dad is 500 miles away".
• Hung up.
• Called my husband at work. No answer.
• Called the front desk of his work still trying to pull myself together.
• Finally got him to get off work and come get me.
• We slooooowly drove it to Pep Boys and had them inspect it. We had to stop twice so it could cool down a bit. 
• Got a phone call around 8:15 that the cost to fix it would be $1300.
• Jaw hit the floor. 

Apparently my intake manifold was busted, all of my hoses needed to be replaced, and my water pump was bad. Now this car had 284,000 miles on her. She lived a good life,  but have I mentioned I don't like change?

So Phillip and I spent the next day or so trying to figure out what to do. Do we fork out the money to just have it fixed only to have something else go wrong soon? Do we try to sell it and buy a new car? Do we try to sell it and buy an old car?

We ended up selling to some junker place for about $400. Looking at new cars and the low payments was reaalllly tempting. We were looking at a Chevy Aveo that was about $8,000. Then we listened to some Dave Ramsey, got our senses about us, and set about looking for used junkers.

So it happened one of the men I work with buys used cars and fixes them up to sell. Just what we needed! He kept telling me how ugly this car was and I kept trying to convince him I didn't care! I took it for a drive, Phillip took it for a drive, and we bought it! 

I think we kind of went backwards, it's '95 Nissan Maxima with crazy amounts of hail damage and scratches where it looks like someone had tried to buff it out. But it's 4 doors with A/C, a sun roof, and a CD player lol. It still has about 185,000 miles on it but after asking around I found out that apparently Nissan's can go forever if you keep up the maintenance. It also gets about 24mpg, not too shabby! 

So instead of taking out a loan for a nice car that would run well and get good gas mileage, we bought a car that we paid for in cash, which was kind of empowering. This was our first major purchase as a married couple and I have to say we did pretty well! It seemed like a really crummy way to start our first week as a married couple and I think for us it was a big hurdle to overcome and we succeeded!