Well here it is, a little over a year after my article on my wife’s purchase of a pre-owned 1996 Buick LaSabre, to replace the one she totaled the November before that. Our technician, who sold her the car to begin with, had to replace the engine. He felt so bad about the engine giving up the ghost within the thirty days after the purchase that he did it free of charge. Now that’s rare! Who knows what the cost would have been if we had to pay for it. He did not say…and we didn’t ask!

Technicians like that are hard to find! If you do not have a technician that you can trust, buy our video, [1] “Basic Car Maintenance For Pretty Hands!®”, and learn tips on how to choose your technician.

Many people have been taken to the cleaners (so to speak) by used car salespeople and technicians that have no sense of business ethics. Fortunately, we were not one of them. But what if our technician held to the sales disclaimer, “as is where is”? We would have had to pay for an engine overhaul. Can you say, “$$$$”?

Recently, her transmission gave out and her left-front wheel bearing gave out. That little venture cost us $1700. We tossed the idea around of buying a junkyard special, but frankly, we would have paid $500 or so for it and would have no guarantees. So we decided to have it overhauled for $1000. The $700 extra was for repairing the engine from Dexcool-induced damage and the labor to have the transmission removed and replaced. Fortunately, we had the time to save the cash for this repair. We were relieved that we did not have to put it on our credit card.

A couple of days after my wife picked up her car with the new transmission, the engine’s timing chain tensioner pulley broke and the chain skipped, causing her engine to shut down, leaving her stranded. The engine sustained internal damage as a result and her engine had to be sent to performance specialists for major repairs (bent piston rod). That little jaunt cost us another $800, for a total of $2,500.

I drove the car afterwards and noticed that the transmission was slipping…you know… when you put it into gear, but it doesn’t go right away and then BOOM, the car jerks into the direction selected. I told my wife to take the car back to the technician to have it evaluated. The technician concurred with my diagnosis and called in the technician who overhauled the transmission. After close examination, they decided it was the top engine motor mount (?) that was causing the trouble. That was another $100.

After $2,600 of repairs, we finally have a very dependable car (I hope). But what if we had not paid cash for all of that? What if we put it on our MasterCard that charges 18% interest and paid the minimum monthly payment? $2,600 would end up costing us $3,240 and taking twenty-seven months to pay off!

Many people owe roughly $8,000 on their credit cards on the average (over 115 million Americans!) and an emergency, like our engine breaking down, would normally be “charged” to a MasterCard or Visa.

Take for an example, a person I know, which owns a 2000 Jaguar. He noticed a noise coming from the right-front wheel area and took the car to the dealer’s technician, who told him that he needed a new transmission. $7,000 later, he got his car back, but the noise was still there. The next day, he took it to a Jaguar dealer, who still has it because now they cannot get it to start! Not to mention the fact that they haven’t addressed the original problem: the noise. What if that person put that $7,000 on the old MasterCard and paid the minimum payment of say, $122.10? It would take ELEVEN YEARS to pay off that $7,000. In addition, that $7,000 would cost him $9,117.20, for a total of $16,117.20 for a transmission repair!!! That is insane and should be illegal!

July 2007, my wife and I decided to get totally out of debt, using a plan found in a book called, [2] “The Total Money Makeover,” by David Ramsey. We saved up money into what Mr. Ramsey calls the “Emergency Fund.” That is so we can pay cash for things that come up, due to eventual wear and tear and so on.

I realize that in “Everyone should have a bankroll ready” I wrote, “just buy a new car every couple of years,” and sure, it’s great if one can afford a new car every couple of years. But those of us that don’t make six-figure incomes and want to live debt free have to be content with such things as we have. If one can pay cash for a new car, great; more power to you. But most of us cannot, so we must take steps to create a car maintenance financial buffer and a new car fund for ourselves, so we will not be strained when it comes time to “pay up.”

Therefore, SAVE, SAVE, SAVE YOUR CASH! Don’t be caught having to pay for vehicle maintenance with a credit card. As you can see from my personal example, car repairs can be very costly, and to put something like that on a credit card is just enslaving yourself to another MasterCard.