August has been an expensive month for car repairs! For reference, I drive a 20 year old car that has been “new to me” for about 10 years. It was purchased in cash for somewhere around $7-8000 at that time.  With inflation, an online calculator says 8K would be around $10,400 today (which is crazy!). This has been a very reliable car which now has about 180,000 miles on it. I have not had to put much into the car over the years beyond routine maintenance.

This month it developed some electrical and oil leakage problems, which ended up costing:

207 for a battery replacement

494 for electrical system repair, fixing the oil leak, and an oil change

27 to replace a burned out headlight a week later

360 in rental car fees since I had to keep driving to work at dawn’o’clock with no public transportation

And some uber fees to drop off/pick up, which I consider more the cost of being single

In total, $1,088. A lot for one month, but a lot less considering the 10 years of reliable transportation with no car payments. Hoping to get at least another couple years out of it. And as my mechanic pointed out, I couldn’t buy the same car for that today. Driving an older car for 10 years, I have had plenty of notice to save up in my car  repair/replacement fund