Indebt and car about to pack up

Nayma12

I realised that I hadn't thanked everyone here for the advice about my car. Update: I used my colleague's husband's garage and he charged me less for the work but was still a significant £600 - everything was itemised and fairly realistically priced. there was just a lot wrong with the car. something else went wrong with it about 2 months later ( another £120) then MOT and more to fix (another £100 inc mot). I received some money for my birthday and found a very old savings account so now have £1,000 in a fund I am saving for a "new" car. I have taken all your advice and will try to put what I have away when I can so that I can replace the car if I find I have these huge bills for it again. I will try to find a second hand car and pay cash. You are all right - I don't need any more credit. Thanks for the great advice.

asparagus1968

just wanted to say well done and thanks for the update:)

Pollygarter

Love the car fund you've set up for yourself. Great idea. It may be a good idea to get a regular payment going into that as many of us find there is never anything "left over" without the clear focus of what you're going to budget to save. Especially as I see you have kids like I do. Very effect cash extracting cost centres! All the best to you.

pineconesjay

I think your original post described my worst fear.
I am running about in a 20 year old car that appears to have plenty of life left, but I worry about how to cope with a sudden and costly repair bill, or worse, crash it and have no car.
We live fairly remotely, there's no bus service here and the school bus is a 5km drive away, so no chance of walking/biking it with 2 children under 6 - also the bus trip takes over an hour so it's early mornings anyway.
Being in debt is such a burden. As soon as we're debt free we'll move close (like, walking distance!) to the kid's school. Just hope the car lasts that long too!