Dependability

That title has always described my van.

Can I just say, I love my van.  We bought it before we should have, but by the time we figured that out, we were in the Dave Ramsey program and only owed $8000.  Got it paid off and from that day on, it drove so much better.

It’s 10 years old now, with 140K miles on it.  We have been hoping it would give  us another 3 years of service, but Thursday evening a warning light came on.  With the next day being Matt’s birthday I decided to keep this to myself.  I drove the car to Mainz-Kastel for them to tell me that it is the transmission.  They recommended that I take the car to the Chrysler dealer  for them to work on it.  They can’t even see the car until the 11th, so until then we are down to 1 car.  I are really praying that when I get there they discover that it was just a simple filter needing to be replaced that was triggering the transmission light.  (If you’re car person and know the likelyhood of this being the case as almost zip, don’t spoil it for me.)

I finally told Matt the bad news Saturday morning just before we left for Ramstein as I was pretty sure he would wonder why I insisted we drive the Durango.  Oh, speaking of the Durango, can I just say I am SO very thankful we were able to find that vehicle!

IT FITS ALL OF US!

Matt’s response to the bad news was impressive.  He thought for a minute and then just said that we’d buy another beater and I’d drive the Durango.  We are both super happy with our current vehicles.  Neither of us wants to have to change cars but because we’ve been following the Dave Ramsey principles this inconvenience is not an emergency.  We are annoyed, but not freaking out.

I was listening to the podcast from 3/24/11, 3rd hour, very close to the end (that episode happened to be a repeat) I felt more and more convinced we are weird.  He was recalling a situation in his past when American Express was calling and threatening him and his wife.

…This debt thing sucks.  It’s not working.  And I will never be back here again….  And I got a couple of things out of that…. I’ll never be in that situation again.  Why? Because I won’t borrow money again.  You gotta have some things that you say, “No matter what.”  Never again.  NEVER again am I gonna be in that situation.  NEVER AGAIN, NO MATTER WHAT.  There’s nothing I want badly enough.  There’s no dream I want that’s big enough.  There’s no nightmare that you can introduce to my life that is scary enough. You’re not big enough, bad enough, or angry enough to make me wanna borrow money again. I’m done.  And that’s the benefit of having gone through financial hell in your 20’s if you’re wise enough to learn something.  The benefit (of going through what we did) is that we’ll never be back there again.  I’m not going to be susceptible to that.  I’m going to avoid that.  I’ll make other mistakes because I’m out here breathing, but I won’t have someone threatening to take my car out of  my driveway.  I’ll get a bike and a nice big coat for the winter before I have a car loan again.  You don’t have a car that I want that bad. I want financial peace.  Two words that don’t go together, like airline service.  Financial Peace. (Dave Ramsey)

If I have to say good-bye to my van, so be it.  I will be sad.  I will be frustrated because I will miss the convenience and room.  But I will not borrow money for a car.  I don’t need one that bad.  And we have other goals to meet before I get another nice van.  Most likely, it will be after we get to the states when I get another van.  I will be counting the days.  But I will remain debt free.  Weird.  And I’m okay with that.