This is a task that I'm surprised I crossed off the list so soon. But with M's job moving him to the next city over, sharing our one car wasn't really feasible anymore. So I started looking into purchasing a car through a private sale, something affordable and something that would get me through a few years. Essentially, I was looking for a clunker.
My dad was watching his internal internet board and saw a few cars that looked like they might work. After doing some research and investigation, I settled on a white pontiac sedan. A friend of the family is a mechanic, so we had him look the car over, and we felt satisfied that it was a good purchase.
On Friday, I had a hectic day of arranging insurance, license and the cash to pay for it. Picked it up Friday night and made arrangements to have the car go in to a shop to be safety tested (law here says a car of a certain age must pass a safety test before it's licensed fully). I drove the car short distances over the weekend, as I have a temporary permit on it while we're waiting for it to go in for the safety. My dad volunteered to take the car over today for the test, as he had also offered to pay the $75 for the safety. An hour goes by, and I don't hear from him. As the safety test should have only taken an hour, that stresses me out a bit. So I texted him. He texts me right back, 'Call please.' Uh oh. 'Call please' is my dad's code for 'Bad shit is going down.'
I called him, and yup, sure enough...the car isn't going to pass safety. There is trouble with the brake lines and they're leaking fluid. They need to be replaced in order to pass the safety test...and it's going to cost me nearly $1000. Ouch.
The car itself only cost me $1500.
So...I guess I'm paying an extra $1000 to get the car on the road. All in all, this car will get me 5 years of use...so I keep telling myself that $2500 for that is a good deal.
So goal number 22, done.
No comments:
Post a Comment