Am I Being Punished?

When i started this blog everything seemed normal until April. April Fools day was the day my transmission broke down.   Before it broke down I wrote heavily on car payments. Why I hate car payments,  why my Father in law shouldn't of bought a car for his wife. Why my Sister in law shouldn't have paid so much for a new car. On and on and all of a sudden i'm out of a car. I spent the next month working on my car and finally was able to get it fixed but not without it breaking down a few more times. I almost gave up. I tried getting a loan to buy a car with no luck. That is where I came up with the 5000 dollar rule. I realized that sometimes there is time where you absolutely need a car but again a need can easily creep into the want category. 5 K  should easily satisfy both. My car is now running ok. It still has a few issues. The latest i'm working on is it overheating which should be an easy fix.

The transmission I had to replace.

This weekend I have relatives staying with us and my van decides to break down. It sounded like a misfire. The auto parts guy suggested that I replace all the plugs and wires but I just wasn't buying that it was a plug or wire so I did some individual firing test on all the cylinders and found that the 6 cylinder wasn't firing. I put started the engine with all cylinders firing and noticed a knocking sound. I opened up the valve cover and found my problem.

If you can't tell that is a broken valve spring to the left of the screen. 

Well it's been about a week since I worked on this post and yes I feel I am being punished.  I don't know the fate of this blog but I am going to tone it down quite a bit. While I wad modifying a tool to fix my van my angle grinder slipped and hit my hand. I had surgery this last Thursday and now am up to my eyeballs in medical debt and unsure when I will go back to work. In the mean time I will start a new blog on creative ways to get out of debt. Funny how the world can flip upside down. See you all.

The I can't afford award goes to...

In my research of finding out if some of my assumptions are true that is that although my neighbors comunity and friends have a great standard of living (vacations cars houses jobs) the real truth is that a hiccup in their paycheck could potentially bring there standard of living to a complete halt. They would probably then go to their church ask for assistance so they can get by all the while holding on to the house car and even rvs and ATVs.  I found a few examples of people like that. I don't know about  them asking for assistance but reading their adds you can tell they were greedy for themselves and it eventually caught up to them so I would like to highlight a few of these people I have found and eventually have a name of an award for them. For the sake of privacy I will not disclose real names.
Let's start with Lisa. Lisa lives in a very nice neighborhood in Utah.  Her original post said she had lost her job and needed to sell her motorcycle because she can no longer afford the payments.  She bought it for her husband for Christmas but due to a job loss she needs to sell it.

One of my rules of buying a gift is do not buy on a credit plan that you have to make payments. Have your gifts paid for because you don't know if you are going to lose your income and then tell the receiver of the gift "oh by the way you know that gift I bought you I really didn't  pay for it my finance company did and although it seemed as though we owned it we don't so I'm going to need it back so I can sell it to save my credit. It's the thought that counts right? " Also notice the house and neighborhood she lives in. It is a very nice neighborhood in her comunity. I personally know these houses are worth around 300 K. I bring this up because if your going to buy a luxury house (In my opinion a luxury house is anything above 220K in utah since the average wage is around 40 )back it up and I don't mean by a steady job because in my opinion most jobs are not steady. I mean by putting a large enough down payment to make your monthly payments affordable.  Have enough left over each month to save for an emergency fund. Have an fully funded emergency fund that will get you through 6 months of hardship.  In the end if you don't protect your what's important it can be taken away from you. Trust me I have close friends and family members who have taken advantage of people like this and have scored big time through someone else's mishandling of money.

Justifying wants as needs

I can't remember if I ever published this. It was written before my accident.  Enjoy.


I had some friends over last night who I consider great friends.  We have a lot of fun talking but unfortunately our time was limited.  They could barely squeezed us into there vacation schedule but I'm still greatful for them thinking of us and making time for us. As always if there is something that is bugging me I am going to share it on here and there was one thing that I have to rant about my good friends and of course it does have to do with car purchases. They showed up in a 2009 Chrysler Town and country. I found out during our conversation that they bought it for around 12500. I thought that was alright. It broke a couple of rules I have with my self proclaimed organization " car payments anonymous" which is if you absolutely have to buy a car do not finance past 5000 dollars. I did a quick calculation and said " so you are paying around 240 a month. ( a quick way to calculate a car payment is 18 dollars to 20 dollars per 1000 borrowed on a 60 month loan). He said not exactly.  We put a few upgrades that put the loan at about 18500.

First ofallWhat kind of upgrades did 6000 dollars get him.  I don't understand what he needed to get him from point a to point b for a higher price than what I paid for my van. It seems to me lately that there is alot of us out there JUSTIFYING our purchases as NEEDS when they are just wants. A vehicle for the family is a need. What crosses into a want zone is when your justifying mileage year and features for needs when you really think about it they are just wants.  We also are justifying reliability is why we are paying so much but although reliability is a need a reliable brand new car Is not.

I think I am so passionate about this is because I see these mistakes ruining credit and lives.  I see people continue to purchase new cars upgrading their houses or even buying a newer more expensive house and think that nothing wrong is going to happen but when it does and they lose their house over a car purchase that was too expensive then rely on society and church organizations to help them through a difficult time that they helped bring upon themselves then it affects the rest of us who thought about our purchases vs our income and made more wise decisions.