I bought a ‘99 Mercury Sable LS wagon back in 2012 with 63K miles on it. Yes, it had been wrecked - the front clip had been replaced with one from a Ford Taurus, but it had been done well. It was the same color and same options as this Taurus, but with the jump seat in the back it had seating for eight (which I tried,…

Ignore me I woke up and chose violence today. 

My van payment is $200/mo. Adding $400+ to that, even for only a year, is not insignificant. I could trade in my van and get a newer one with half the miles for $400/mo. for 4-5 years. Sure, there's no guarantee that the newer van wouldn't also have problems, but my old van has 126K miles and is only getting older. If…

Are you trying to be a troll or did you forget the /s tag?

This was in Ohio, and it was a non-native white pine that had suffered some sort of fungal rot. It snapped about three feet from the base. Lucky for me, it was deemed an “act of God” by property insurance, which meant I was on the hook for the cost and removal. Hooray comprehensive coverage.

That pine tree had a…

Most people never get beyond “because I was able to X, everyone else should be able to, as well” and start to realize that there’s often a complex mixture of events that leads to a person either being able to do something or not, such as afford to fix a car. Usually, when people start with pointing out something like,…

I’m not sure what your point is?

What if you have, like, several emergencies?

Things I don’t have:

Let’s say you have a car and the transmission goes out. These are your options:
 
1.) Spend anywhere from $1500 to $5000 for a repair at a shop. This is assuming you can find a reputable shop, and it also means being without your car for an indeterminate amount of time. Better hope you have a backup for getting to work,…

The reason people ditch cars that have life left in them, is that it’s easier to make a $500/mo. car payment, for a car that probably has a warranty and likely less to go wrong mechanically, than come up with that $3,500 and be down a vehicle for the duration of the repair.

Not so much a travel story, as my old Neon always had a habit of breaking down right before Fourth of July weekend.

I think it was 2004, I’d only had my Neon a year and was still fairly green when it came to doing my own car repairs. I was supposed to drive to Cincy that weekend to visit my friend, get under-age drunk…

If they did, it would look something like this:

Most people don’t care what you drive anymore, as long as you know how they feel about freedom. That’s what most of the stickers seem to be about these days.

That’s one of the biggest drawbacks to working in education, which quite a few people do. Sure, you get a big chunk of time “off” (and any teacher will tell you that, no, you don’t actually get all that time off, as there is a a lot of prep that happens over the summer), but that means you have to cram everything into…

True story. I had to screw the warped dash pad down for my MIL, and I’ve replaced two window regulators so far.

In the Grand Caravan:
- The motherf*cking radio is the WORST.
- The roll-top covers for the center console bins are corregated and hold onto every thing. Unless you’re one of those weirdos that thinks you shouldn’t have food & drink in a vehicle that’s basically designed as a Fisher Price playhouse on wheels, it will…

Been there, OP:

This is why I’m grateful that I have no extended family or friends scattered across the country, and why I flat-out refuse to travel on holidays. I never understood why anyone would want to go camping, to the beach, to waterparks, or anything like that on Memorial Day/4th of July. I understand that sometimes, the only…

The problem with GM seats is they tend to start collapsing at about 75K miles. The seats in my MIL’s 2000 Lesabre are like this - the passenger-side seat is still good, and it’s a comfortable car to ride in. But driving? Not so much.