Bricks Not Books

VintageHistorian

Both my WI talks had to be cancelled as my car broke down again this morning T_T It struggled to start and then when it finally kicked into life the engine light was on and the glow plug light was flashing like before.

Garage have taken a look and replaced a bit of a fuel injector but otherwise they think it might be the ECM. So now I'm in a quandry. Both my Dad and Mr VH are recommending that I look at trying to get more mileage out the car. It's 19 years old but only has 80k miles.

But from Googling it looks like an ECM repair is £800 to over £1000. And it may not even be that. Do I risk a large chunk of my new car fund on a repair that may not be the repair it needs? I need to actually speak to the garage tomorrow and get their opinion as they called me late and I didn't want to delay them getting home.

I've got £3000 in the new car fund and another £3000 in my emergency fund, and I can get £1000 out of another savings pot if needed. I've had a look on a few used car sites and found some potential options at various price ranges. But I've never bought from strangers before, my past cars have all come from family (two from my grandparents and one from my uncle). It's quite nervewracking when you don't have a huge budget and can't save up a lot more very quickly.

Do I go with something closer to the £3000 end knowing that I might only get 2 years out of it? Or go towards £6000 and hope I can get over 5 years of life out of it? In this inflated market is it really worth the extra money?

I'm going to sleep on it as it's been a stressful day but I have a lot of questions roaming my head after this.

ruby_eskimo

Sounds expensive either way.  Don't forget you could get some cash for your old car, be it scrap value for a couple of hundred quid - my dad actually sold a very old non-working volvo to some stock car racers for about £500 a couple of years ago.  The problem is that the supply chain issues have driven up the price of second hand cars across the board so you'd be paying over the odds for something now anyway regardless of if it came from a private sale or a dealer.  Personally I've always bought from a dealer; in fact my first car was a VW polo that came from a dealership in London that usually sold Bentleys and Porche's but one of their clients had this polo as a city car and wanted to upgrade it to something new so they were selling it at a ridiculously cheap price and it had done only 5k miles and was about 10 years old.  I'd wait and see what the garage says and see what the most cost effective solution is; if you spend £1000 on fixing it now, how much longer do they think it will last?  If it's a couple of years then you might as well just bite the bullet and try and get something else.

VintageHistorian

My brother is going to buy my Polo off me @ruby_eskimo - I've only asked for £200 (or was it £250? I should find out XD). 

I phoned my local VW dealership and they said an ECU (not ECM, got my letters in a muddle) is nearly £2000 for a car as old as mine. Basically if they replace it then it has to be mapped to the car's onboard computer and that requires a specialist, and they are very expensive people.

My brother is going to try taking the ECU out and sending it off to an online company who will test it and try to repair it for £300. If it works then he gets a Polo for nearly £600, if it doesn't work he's going to take bits off it to sell or use with his existing vintage Polo and then scrap the rest.

The £2000 quote was what did it in the end. That and the fact that I just can't trust the car any more. I keep thinking that if I'd had a baby last year then I would be risking breaking down with either a tiny baby or an almost 1 year old in the back. I know that breakdown companies prioritise you in that situation but all that can mean is that you wait 4 hours instead of 8, 4 hours with a hungry baby and no supplies wouldn't be something I want to go through!

I went and looked at another Polo yesterday with my Dad. A private sale that I spotted on eBay. Unfortunately it had several advisories from the MOT that weren't mentioned in the advert and that would add nearly £500 onto the price, and the guy only let me go for 2 minute test drive. I understand why, but it made me feel rushed and a bit uncomfortable that I didn't really have time to try and listen to the engine.

My Dad called me once he'd spoken to my brother and said he didn't think I should get it and by that time I'd had a cup of tea and a quick chat with my local garage about the repairs and had already decided the same thing. My in-laws have very kindly offered to loan me one of their cars (they've been considering becoming a one car household for a while so this might be a test for them to see how that works) to take some of the pressure off. Me and Mr VH are on holiday next week and we won't be taking my car with us. So we'll have 5 days away and then once we're back we'll organise a car swap so my brother can have my Polo, I can borrow the in-laws car, and then I have a few weeks grace to look around and test drive a few more without feeling extremely pressured.

Mr VH has been offering to give me some money towards a car for months now, which I've finally taken him up on. He'll contribute whatever is needed on top of what my brother pays to bring it up to £500, and I'm then going to try and save £500 myself in March. Some of that will have to come from diverting other savings pots and I'll need to be a bit frugal (not great when you're going on holiday) but I should be able to do it. That will give me £4000 in the new car fund and I'll feel a bit more comfortable if I don't need to dip quite so far into the emergency fund.

Dinner tonight is a roast from the freezer. I'm having beef, Mr VH is having lamb, we've got some Aunt Bessie's potatoes and frozen veg.

Have a good week everyone!

ruby_eskimo

Think that's a sensible decision and sounds like the car swapping around will be the best solution for everyone.  Anything car computer related is just ridiculously expensive and makes me wish not everything in more modern cars was electronic now because its easier for things to go wrong.  I remember about 4 years ago, we were at my company's Christmas party and someone's brand new jeep had a catastrophic electrics failure at the exit / entrance of the car park meaning that they blocked the entire road.  Couldn't even push the thing out the way because the electric parking break had seized so we all had to basically drive through a hedge to get out 🤣

VintageHistorian

I completely agree Ruby! My grandfather used to be able to do a lot of basic car maintenance himself before he passed away.

Last time I needed a headlight bulb changed VW insisted that they had to replace the entire light at a cost of £50, instead of the £5 it would have cost for a lightbulb. The waste from that is extraordinary, a huge chunk of clear plastic that will have just been binned because they would rather be spiteful and stop people doing these things themselves.

VintageHistorian

Holiday has been and gone. We were back at the Elveden Forest site for Center Parcs and had a lovely time. Took books and picnic lunch bits with us, had crumpets for breakfast, and then ordered food in the evenings. I went swimming twice (Mr VH isn't keen on swimming himself) and we also had one round of adventure golf. One morning we went to the Pancake House for breakfast, and on Friday when my Dad picked us up we parked the car back in the main car park and then went to the on-site Cafe Rouge for breakfast, as a thank you to Dad for being our taxi.

Now we're back. The downside to having a holiday early on in the year is that now I don't have any other trips to look forward to for the rest of the year. And I'm reluctant to book anything else for, say, September, as A. I think we need to be careful with our money given the car problems and all the bills going up, and B. I'm hoping to be pregnant again at some point and once I am I won't want to be more than a 15 minute drive from a hospital in case the worst should happen again!

But the world is a very sad place at the moment and I don't have cheerful things in the future to brighten it.

Must pull myself together. The cheerful things are a home that isn't having bombs rained down on it and food in my cupboards and my fridge, and as always the presence of Mr VH who gives wonderful hugs on request, as well as having my family so much closer.

I have money shuffled. Council tax has gone up by just over £5 a month, which isn't too bad. I think February was our last month on our old EDF rate so our next bill will be the shocker (we don't pay by Direct Debit, I put the meter readings in every month and pay for what we've used) and will set the tone for the rest of the year. Monthly food cost is still a bit of an unknown thanks to holiday spends. And speaking of holiday spends I have totalled up our costs and let Mr VH know his half, which he can send me at some point during the month.

Once all the essentials were done, including the customary OP and the non-negotiable £200 towards the maternity leave fund, I shoved £500 in the new car fund. That means I've had to cut out the other savings pots this month, although it has still left me a few hundred pounds in my current account and if I'm careful with the rest of my spending I can use a bit of that to top-up the other pots.

Back to work tomorrow. I'm 36 years old and I already want to retire. I have my FIRE number, but while I still have lots of short-term savings to sort out the investing and FIRE goal must wait. So I will plod on with the day job, and try to find some nice things for me and Mr VH to do in the rest of the year that will be things to look forward to.

Dinner tonight is chicken and parma ham pasta. If anything can make up for going back to work, it's one of my favourite dinners.

Have a good week everyone!

VintageHistorian

A new car has been purchased! I am now the proud owner of a Kia Venga in dark grey. In-laws have kept me on their car insurance for 2 months as a back up but so far I'm quite happy with it. I've stalled it twice (bloody petrol engines), it's a smaller engine at 1.4 so when I put my foot down it takes an age to do anything, and the CD player only holds one CD.

BUT it's 11 years old and has less than 60k miles. I want it to last me at least 5 years and I think and hope that it will do so. The Kia brand seems to be reliable, from what I've read online, and I'll mostly use it for short journeys and the occasional drive down to the in-laws so it shouldn't be put under too much strain.

It was £4650. I did some money juggling as I have nearly £2000 of the new car fund sitting in a regular savings account and I didn't want to sacrifice the interest as it matures in June anyway. So I took some money out of the emergency fund and some out of my miscellaneous fund. I've made a note of how much the emergency fund is owed to bring it up to where it was last week, and once that has been replaced the miscellaneous fund can be topped back up to even it out.

My brother has paid me £200 for the Polo and my husband has paid me £300 as a contribution so £500 has already been put back in the emergency fund. I should be able to put the rest back over the next 2 months. Overall not the worst hit that it could have been.

Once that's done I'm going to re-jig some of my side hustle payments. The new car fund will restart but only at the basic £100 a month for the time being. My WI talk money, which was going to the car fund, will go towards the emergency fund until it's recovered and after that will go to the Future House Move Fund. New Car Fund will eventually get more directed to it in the future, but for the time being can play second fiddle to other priorities.

Food shopping has been done for the week. Tomorrow I'm picking up a dozen eggs from the local market so I might bake a cake this weekend. No plans beyond that. I want to get some plants but it really needs to wait until next payday given how much I've already spent this month XD

Have a good weekend everyone!

ruby_eskimo

Congratulations on making the finances work for a new car.  Kia's are definitely reliable and my MIL has a Venga - you can definitely fit a lot in there and it doesn't feel like a huge vehicle that you're driving.  Sounds like a good plan to top everything back up again.

VintageHistorian

April got away from me a bit. It's hard to keep up a diary about clearing the mortgage when you've postponed the mortgage attention to rebuild your emergency fund.

The March total ended up being £126.63, and April's was £134.91. These were the standard payments of £124 plus a couple of TT's on top.

Good news though, I'm almost at the point of refilling my emergency fund back to it's pre-car status. I think I have around £80 left to catch up. I've got a £30 cheque from a recent talk that I need to pay into my account, and I'll be doing another talk this coming week so I'll pay those both in together. That money will knock a good chunk off the £80, and I sold a White Stuff jumper on eBay today so the money from that can go towards it too. Then whatever's left can be covered by continuing to be careful with my cash during this month.

Not much else going on in the world of VH. Me and Mr VH had a week off in April but stayed at home rather than have a second "proper" holiday. I have already forgotten what we did, we both returned to horrible things in our work inboxes so that quickly negated the relaxed feeling we had ended the week with.

Plants have been purchased recently, mostly using a giftcard I got for my birthday. This includes two new hanging baskets, which have got petunias and lobellias in, and four little fence hanging pots that have a plant whose name I can't remember (might be campanulas?), we shall see if the pots prove suitable for them.

Have a nice weekend everyone!

VintageHistorian

The emergency fund is back to it's pre-car state! Chucked in my talks and eBay money and then added another £20 for good measure. Now I can go back to saving £100 a month in the emergency fund and regular amounts in my Lifetime ISA and the future house move fund etc.

To celebrate I sent a Tilly Tidy of £3.06 to the mortgage. Mr VH had bad train problems on Thursday night, Friday morning and this morning as well so I need to get him to send me his season ticket details so I can claim the delay repay charge for Thursday night, and possibly this morning as well. I doubt there will be anything for Friday morning as it was the runover from Thursday nights problems.

So yesterday I was up at 4.45am to drive Mr VH to a different station, and then I was up at 5.30 this morning to do the same. I was going to try and go back to bed but once I got home it was 6am and I felt too awake. So instead I went to a local carboot sale and had a wander around. Then I went to the monthly market, got eggs and lamb, dropped off recycling with the community recycling group, had a delicious bacon roll from the recycling team's cafe, and got a sausage roll from one of the other stalls.

I then came home, weeded the front as it looked awful, freaked out after disturbing several lots of ants and a couple of small spiders, baked a lemon drizzle cake, make an apple crumble to cheer up Mr VH, did the washing up, wiped down the kitchen, and now I don't want to do anything else for the rest of the day. But I will need to get up and peel potatoes around 5.30. Dinner tonight is chicken kievs, with the wedges and sugar snap peas.

Tomorrow I will be far more lazy. I will just need to make a toad in the hole and garlic roasted spuds for dinner.

Have a good weekend everyone!