Our car is worth $513 according to Kelly Blue Book. That means filling it up with gas increases its value by nearly 10% and tires cost as much as the car. However, recently the strut broke and cost $1000 to fix. What is one to do?
Get a different car
It is not a shock to me that cars are expensive. Getting a new car would easily cost $500 a month. Even a used one would probably be around $300. We are not at a point where we need a different car, so we’ll take this off the table for now.
Junk yard
A junk yard could have the parts I need for a great deal. However, when breaking down the bill I saw that the parts only cost $300 and the majority was labor.
Labor
It is only fair that mechanics get paid fairly. Mechanics are a skilled profession that doesn’t a college degree. I agreed to get the service at 11AM and they were done by 3:30PM. In those 4.5 hours they collected $500 in labor fees, not bad for them.
Conclusion
So our car is back in shape and doing what it was made to do, get us from point A to point B. It may not look great, but it functions and has A/C, so we’ll keep it around.