My car engine light started coming on and I found this confounding. What other problems would I have to endure during this cursed year 2016? I mean nothing's going right this year, including politically with our election of a madman which is totally different subject.
I have a fairly new car we bought i t just a couple of years ago so obviously we are still making payments on it. I am maintaining the car well, doing all the things that one is expected to do from oil changes to a recent tune-up and as I just noted in the intro to this posting suddenly the engine light has started coming on. WHY!?!?!?!?
We took the car back to the dealer where we bought it and they gave us some good news for a change, there is a problem with the engine however it is still under warranty so there would be no cost to us to make the repairs. Then they follow up with the bad news... they tell us they have to do some descaling process which is not covered under warranty and unfortunately the cost of this descaling process is somewhere in the area of $700 so we take care of that by adding yet another charge to our credit cards furthering our financial burdens. The real pisser is that even though I’ve only had the car a few years about 6 months ago there was another issue is some GE proprietary feature called the “Stabili-trak”. When we reported this they indicated it might be covered under the drive-train warranty however once they investigated the problem they determined it was something outside of the warranty coverage and the repair would cost us nearly $300, so outside of the normal payments we have had to put in an additional $1,000 in unexpected expenses.
Okay so my car should now be perfect right? Wrong! Within a few days I start hydroplaning while on wet roads, not terrible at first, just a slide here and there but with the weather getting worse I was talking to one of my co-workers who told me he could see just by looking at them I am out of tread and need new tires. So another $400 expense. Our funds are so severely drained, I mentioned in other posts my dog had recently died we had to pay for those expenses (euthanasia, cremation, etc) plus months of paying hundreds of dollars each month just for his medication. Then you throw into the mix all the costs that we are accruing because of my husband’s medical conditions and not to mention the money sucking whore of a rental property that not only are we under-water on the mortgage, but we don’t collect enough rent to cover each monthly payment and have to maintain the property for our tenants. This SUCKS!
What else can go wrong? Right? This morning I go out to the car ready to drive to work and the car won't start. What now? Was the battery dead? It didn’t sound like it because I didn’t hear that normal “clicking” sound you hear when you are trying to start a dead car so I drove my husband's vehicle to work which is going to be a nuisance because he has a doctor’s appointment. I texted him (of course while all this was happening he was still in bed, I get up around 4:15 a.m.) and in the text I suggested that he use UBER to get back and forth from his doctor that day. However being more intelligent in these matters than I he called AAA who come out and checked it and jumped the battery, starting the car but all the while they were trying to sell him a new battery. He said no knowing because buying one through AAA would involve a premium or higher cost for the convenience and if we had problems after this and did indeed need a new battery he was thinking he and I could run over to Walmart and buy a new battery cheaper so he drove the car to his doctor’s appointment. Afterwards the car started again so he figured whatever had caused the battery to go dead now seemed to be corrected. However the next morning when I tried again to go to work the car, again won't start. So like the previous day I take my husband's vehicle to work and once again he called AAA. This time their was time to run a diagnostic (no doctor's appointment to rush to) on the battery which it turns out two of the cells were totally depleted so it wasn't any good anymore… More money suck... we had to buy a new battery and my husband now having a change of heart decided to purchase rather than go through the trouble of running to the store he would rather pay for the higher-priced AAA batteries not just for the convenience but to put the problem behind us.
I just got home from work, actually I just got home from shopping for groceries after work. Grocery shopping was something that my husband used to do a lot of when he was well but hasn't been able to do much lately so I usually have to stop on my way home from work or occasionally make a special trip. Having to worry about buying food or picking up his meds had never been a concern for me until lately. As I noted in previous posts life in my house has been scary or at the very least tentative lately so my personal pressures and responsibilities have been compounded dramatically by all these new once shared obligations because there are one less set of hands doing things around the house and it pretty much all falls on my shoulders now.
I worry about my husband everyday, I worry about his heart and if he's going to make it through each day. I have him texting me every morning as soon as he wakes up so I know that he is ok because I leave for work at 4 a.m, (actually I’m usually up at 4 a.m.) and leave for work around 5 a.m. at the latest. He sleeps in until about 9 a.m. or 10 a.m. and sometimes even later than that. Around 10:00 in the morning if I haven’t heard from him I start to get worried. Another worry, more stress, more pressure. I am so worried that something might happen to him and lately that worry is increased thinking something's going to happen to me, whether HIV related or accident related, or even if I have a heart attack and die (I am of that age group) leaving our dogs alone. I think my dogs have become one of my biggest concerns or worries. I always wonder who will take care of them if both of us die. I also worry about what will happen if only one of us dies. If he has a heart attack and dies, aside from the emotional devastation it would put me into major financial bind as he has no life insurance. I have no funds on hand to pay to bury him so the only way would be to take money from my 401k. So on top of the emotional burden that I would be facing I would now have to face ever more financial burden to repay my 401k fund. If I die first he will be in much better shape financially. I have life insurance through my job, I have my 401k and I have a pension at work to which he’s entitled. He would have enough money to care for the dogs but would he be able to physically? I don’t think he has the strength or the stamina to care for them. Again worry, worry, worry, every single day I worry.