Car Trouble

When it comes to replacing our cars we always said that at the point when our maintenance and repairs outweigh the potential cost of a monthly car payment we would upgrade our car, specifically Brian's 1997 Honda Civic. It has been a good car but with 150,000 miles it has had a long life.

Well, last week the muffler died. $400.

This week the clutch went. $800.

Here's the problem, our hypothetical sounded great in the hypothetical but in practicality (and this economy) we had to think twice. The long and the short is that we paid the big bucks and are keeping the car. We had to say to ourselves, after replacing the timing belt and water pump last year (for scheduled maintenance) and now the clutch and the muffler... we've done the bulk of the work already. It has newish tires. The breaks are good. So it is an "evil" we know. If we traded it in and got a newer used car we could potentially be buying a car from someone who is not vigilant about upkeep. So we found ourselves in that gray area and decided we would try to get yet another year out of the old girl. Being that Brian drives into a very ugly area of North Philly a clunker might not be the worst thing for him.

It's just hard justifying $1,200 in one month for a car that probably isn't worth that much on trade in.