Rant #3,152: If I Could See the Light

Oy vey!

Everything is happening to me and around me during this period of time, and it appears I am like the Pigpen character in the “Peanuts” comic strip—

While I don’t have a perpetual dirt cloud over me like he does, I have a rain cloud, and right now, it is raining cats and dogs and just about every other animal I can think of.

While driving back from dropping my son off at work--and planning to visit my ailing mother in the hospital during that trip—my car started to give me problems—no acceleration at all—and somehow, I was able to drive it about two or so miles in this condition until it finally gave out.

I called AAA, had a tow truck come to get me and the car, and with my description of what had happened, the tow truck driver said it sounded like my alternator died, and that the station he was going to drop the car off at would do a full diagnostic on the car to find out what it was.

That part, with labor, would have cost me at least $600.

I was able to get home, and I was told to give the station at least an hour to run the diagnostics on the car.

After giving the station even longer time to run the diagnostics, I called them up, and they told me they had to run further diagnostics on the car, which, of course, made me think it was not the alternator that was the problem.

I called again sometime later, and they told me that the car was dead.

D-E-A-D.

It seemed that after more than nine years and 98,000 miles on the car, the engine had ceased and the car was as useless as an old 8-track tape cartridge.

During the day, I went to get out of the car whatever I could salvage, but my 2014 Kia Optima was no more.

During the afternoon, my wife and my son accompanied me to the local Kia dealer, and my goal was to buy another car, either used or new.

And after several hours, that is just what I did, with the down payment taking a huge chunk out of my bank account and with the subsequent monthly payments also sure to stick a fork into my finances … but I had no choice.

We looked at a couple of cars, and with my finances—current and future—now In disarray and my head probably in a similar state of mind, I settled on a used car, another Kia Optima, but this one from 2020 with less than 30,000 miles on it.

It was sort of a compromise choice.

I did like their 2023 Kia Forte, but I knew that I could not presently afford to buy a new car.

We were shown a couple of other cars—not electrics or hybrids, thank you--and while they were all nice, I still wanted to protect my money as much as I could, so I chose the car that I thought would do that in the best way.

I also wanted a car that replicated, to a certain extent, the car that I had driven for the past nine-plus years and for nearly 100,000 miles, so the one I chose—a deep blue one—fit the bill.

It took a few hours, but the car is now in my possession, and I will be going about my business today as if I still had the old car—drive my son to work, visit my mother in the hospital, and drive wherever else I have to drive to with my new used car.

I guess I should be excited with this car, but while the car is much the same as the other car, there are things I still have to figure out with it,, including how to hook up my phone to it and how to get my satellite radio on it.

The screen in the car is much larger than what I had, but not huge like the newer cars feature, and this car appears to be a bit smaller than the other one I had, with less trunk space, but I can live with all of that.

I got nine years out of the other car and nearly 100,000 miles, so I figure with this car, if I can get six or seven years out of it, that will be a plus.

But with everything happening at once to myself and to my family, this is just another burden I will have to bear during a very, very difficult stretch for us, one that is seemingly becoming more difficult by the day.

Nothing is going right at the moment for us, and I am starting to look back over my shoulder all of the time to see what the next challenge is that will be thrown at me out of the blue.

And I worry about my finances … during the pandemic when I was out of work, I was able to sock away a good amount of money because I was only spending my unemployment money on groceries and on gas, and on little else because the world closed down, but now, a lot of that money is being eroded by our standard of living returning to somewhat normal and prices being sky high to begin with … and now I have this to deal with.

The good thing is that I did not have to hit my main savings accounts, at least not right now, to pay for my new set of wheels, but the future is uncertain, to say the least.

And yes, this all worries me, and to prove my point, I am typing out this Rant at 3 a.m. in the morning, because if I thought I would be able to sleep the night after this last personal fiasco, well, that thought was put to rest pretty quickly.

Have a good weekend, have a good Father’s Day, and yes, I will be here on Juneteenth … by that time maybe I will have figured out the phone and the satellite radio …

But my finances … Fuggedaboudit!