I'm quite frugal in most aspects of my life. I find it's put me in a good position when compared to many of my friends whom constantly have bills they struggle to pay because they signed on for rents/car payments they can't afford.
So I thought I was being nice and frugal when I bought a 4 year old used car and a fair market price all in cash (so no car payment at all each month). 4 years is a great spot on the depreciation curve so seemed like a well researched purchase.
But it just seems like such a losing battle. It's like every time something even trivial goes wrong, it's hundreds of dollars to have a mechanic look at it and diagnose it before hundreds more to fix it. I've thankfully not had any repair/maintenance break the thousand dollar barrier yet but it's still disheartening.
Idk. This is just a dumb rant but it just feels like all my good work saving money in other aspects of my life is a bit of a waste of time because the simplest thing with my car just immediately undoes any value I gained anywhere else.
EDIT: Rather than reply to everyone I'll just list it here:
It's a Subaru Crosstrek 2014. It had 60k miles on it when I bought it.
I did everything by the book and got a pre purchase inspection. However despite that a few issues arose over the first 6 months that were not spotted by that inspection:
1) The fuel system was clogged with dust which needed to be diagnosed and cleaned out (it made refuelling the car very slow) that was $150
2) The front right wheel bearing needed to be replaced. It only manifest as a vibration at highway speeds and not when the inspecting mechanic had it on the rack. That was $400
3) The rear window shattered (for a reason I still don't know) when closing the door one morning. That was $450 to replace.
This all happened within the first 6 months.
I'm not sure how with a set of tools and youtube I would have been able to diagnose a fuel line clog, replace a wheel bearing or fit my own rear hatch glass.
But if any of those are the case then I'm certainly open to learning.
April 02, 2018 at 02:17PM
