I Need A Ride

You’re probably tired of me complaining about gas and money problems, huh? If so, feel free to skip this first part of the post. Any who, I’ve talked about our gas dilemma, and my financial worries ever since starting school. Well, last weekend my parents wanted me to get some flea treatments for Sampson because he’s been scratching lately. When I told them it would have to wait they immediately wanted to know why I couldn’t afford to buy them. They always want to know everything about our lives. I told them about our low checks, and how it would just have to wait till this week. The lectures started. My parents didn’t understand why my husband just didn’t go and find another job if his current one was cutting his hours. But finding a job in this town is not that easy and that recent cut in hours was only temporary. I, on the other hand, don’t really have a choice because I have to go to class. So I just told them that we couldn't help it. This was how it was going to be for a little while. Now, I’m appreciative that my husband is steadily gaining his hours back each week and he should be back to his full forty hours by next week! But that doesn't change the fact that we’re still taking a hit on gas cost. I spent $180 just in gas, during last week. My husband spent at least $90. That’s a lot of dough!

So my parents decided to come up with their own “plan”. They would lend me $4,000 to find myself a used car. I love them and I am so grateful for their help, but I feel like this will put us in an even bigger hole financially. When I told my mom about my hesitation, she said “We already sent for the money and we’ve set up a time this weekend to go look at an ‘SUV’ in town.” In the meantime, I was told to look around. Dealerships don’t ever have anything nice with low miles for less than $10,000 so I quickly quit looking at those, and the real search began. I looked through Cars.com, Auto Trader, and Craigslist. I browsed a few local small dealerships, and some “on the side of the road-for sale by owner” ones. Unfortunately, with less than $7,000 my options were very limited. Still, I found a few that could possibly work. They didn’t have the greatest mileages, but were still in decent condition. My mother’s been looking as well, and now we’re just trying to weed out the bad ones.

Still, this search has left me feeling a bit frustrated and exhausted. My parents want to find something this weekend, and I don’t have the energy to be going all over Texas to try out cars. But I should be grateful that I’m even getting the chance to get one. I wanted a car, 4 cylinder, that would get me GREAT gas mileage. But my dad said he doesn’t trust small cylinder cars with high mileages. Then my mother said with us having Emery we should look into a small SUV with 6 cylinders because they's have more room and still get decent MPG. So that’s what we’ve been looking into. We’ve emailed and called a few potentials but either they’ve been sold or we haven’t heard back. It’s been such a hassle! Car shopping is so not fun when you’re broke, lol!

I’m almost tempted to just get the Ford Escape my parents checked out just to be over this already. I can’t believe I’m actually doing it though. I'm still pretty hesitant about the whole situation. I'm suppose to pay them back with our tax return for next year, but I don't think I can afford to give them our entire tax return. I'm a bit concerned about that. I swear I’m going to have to let them enslave me just to pay them back for everything they’ve helped me with. I’m going to owe them for the rest of my life. Ugh! Wish me luck, please?!