One Car Family No More

It has been some time since I have written something personal, since I'm resting and have some quiet time, just thought I will let you know of a change that will affect our finances in the future; but a much needed one.

Before I start, I just wanted to say on my last online income report I said that I was going to give a hint about some news I wanted to share with you. However, I posted that post on Monday December 7th and you can read all about it here.

I'll get to the news in a few if you don't want to search for it, but I will say that we are no longer a one car family. We used to be a 2 car family, but reducing our incomes and trying to continue to cut expenses, we decided that it was best for our finances to simply have one vehicle.

We saved up and paid cash for our new-to-us van, and for over a year we have been able to manage with one vehicle just fine. Honestly, we got used to having one vehicle and I didn't think we would need another car, ever.

If you are wondering why we decided to cut down to one car, here were our reasons:

• We saved money on car insurance.
• We saved up on gas.
• We saved up on car maintenance.
• We saved money on over spending when we go out.

As you can see, having one car really saved us money. Having one car saved us on yearly inspections and other things that add up financially when you own a car. With having one income at the time, it was the best solution for us and what worked for our family.

Why did having one car work for us for so long?

We made it work. – We decided to work around our schedules; this created a routine for us. We would print out my husband's schedule and used that to make appointments.

We didn't go out much. – To many people, this might sound like a bad thing; but for us, this means less spending. Limiting how much we went out reduced our spending, and this was good for our finances. Supermarket, local restaurants, parks, and library are walking distances; so we took advantage of going out on foot and visiting local places that were free.

We learned to depend on ourselves. – As much as I thought that we were going to end up depending on others to drives us or for others things; this rarely happened because we made it work.

What happened in case of emergency? – Thank God nothing like this ever happened; if there was something urgent that came up, we were able to call family to help us out. Not having another car was never an issue.

So why add another car to the family?

Good question, and I will give you the answer to this question. When you have a toddler, a baby, and a young teenager, having one car was just right for us. What works for you then, might not work for you now; and this was the case for our family. During this year, our son was diagnosed with Autism and began year round schooling and therapy. Our now 3 year old began pre-school and my husband now works second shift the majority of the time. My teen is now 17 and we are planning to visit colleges, which makes it difficult for us to do with one car.

Here comes the latest news if you didn't read and spent hours looking for the hint. I'm also 14 weeks pregnant which explains why I'm in bed writing this post. My pregnancy didn't start as a happy and healthy one, and this lead us to really push having another vehicle.

So having 3 kids in school, all having different school schedules, and my high risk pregnancy lead to our family adding a second vehicle.

Where did the car come from?

The story of the Maxima, the car I thought was simply a piece of junk my husband simply didn't want to let go. My husband had this car before we even met and this poor car sat in his parent's driveway for about 8+ years.

It sat there collecting dust, and if you saw this car, you would have thought it wasn't worth spending any money to fix it. For over a year my husband kept telling me that he wanted to fix the car up so we could have two cars because the kids were going to be going to school soon and things were going to change.

To be honest, I don't like change, especially changes that will affect our finances. I also thought since we were doing great with one car, why bother “wasting” money to fix this junk. As terrible as this sounds, this is exactly what I thought of his idea of fixing this car.

Since he began this project over a year ago, I was the only one that didn't think this was going to work because I was just had my doubts. For Christmas, everyone gave him AutoZone gift cards and little by little my husband started to work on his car. I felt terrible for not being supportive and one day I came to the realization that I needed to stop being such a selfish brat and be his cheerleader.

My husband has been my blog cheerleader and continues to be til this day. So why couldn't I be supportive of this project that was more than just fixing a car. It was personal for him to get his childhood car fixed, and this was more than just money to him. He knew I wasn't sure that this was going to work, and he will text me and send me videos of his progress. This made me feel terrible and helped me change my views.

We used money from the savings account to buy parts for his car. He watched videos online and joined car forums to help him get answers, car parts, and how to fix them. This is when I started to think this was going to work. Honestly, the most expensive parts for his car were the tires!

A few months ago, my husband was able to get his car inspected and insured and his Maxima is the car he takes to work. I am a very proud wife and I love him for not giving up and accomplishing his goal of fixing his childhood car.

How had this affected us financially?

Our finances were not affected as much as I thought they were going to be. Insurance went down by adding a second car, and besides getting the car fixed and inspection, it hasn't been bad at all for a 20 year old car. His car does amazing on gas, and since I have the van, I continue to stay home and it hasn't been filled with gas for over 2 weeks. I simply go to the school and back and to the local grocery store and back.

Since my blog income has been increasing, and a few weeks back I got a call to become a companion position to my previous client that will bring me some extra cash, we will be OK with the little extra expense of having a second car added.

As much as we enjoyed having one car and being a one car family, as our family grows, having two cars is what is going to work for us now.