The Weight of Money

I have a wonderful car! She is 8 years old, has 135K miles, and has never really given me any problems. I would love to keep her until she dies; however, I’m seriously considering selling her sometime soon.

When I returned to college full-time, I couldn’t afford Maryland car insurance. I “sold” my car to my mom, she titled it in Oklahoma, and has kept insurance on it for the past two years with me driving it in Maryland. Thanks to being a full-time student, that is possible. However, now that I’m married and back in the professional world (hopefully I’ll be working soon), I need to get personal insurance and get on the partner’s policy. That means bringing this car back into Maryland.

In 2002, I moved to Maryland with this car. In 2003, I paid all of the fees to get it tagged, titled, and taxed correctly. This included an inspection ($55) that failed due to poor tires ($120). Due to procrastination and a two week vacation, I didn’t re-inspect it within the allotted time and had to get it redone. Inspection number two ($60) resulted in another failure for something as dumb as windshield wipe blades ($15). Finally, my car was properly inspected and then the title fees ($43), excise tax ($100), registration ($128), and other fees ($13.50) were paid. So, three years ago I paid $534.50 to bring my car into Maryland.

So now, I’d be looking at another inspection ($55) and hope that it will pass — they always seem to find something stupid to fail it on. There will be the title fees ($43), excise tax ($32 now because my car 7+ years old), registration ($128), and other fees ($13.50). To continue to own my car, I will pay at least $271.50. And then, I will have the increased insurance rate — I now pay less than $500 a year; before I was paying about $350 a month.

It is looking like my gem of a car is no longer worth keeping. I did have a $200 repair recently, but I felt that was a reasonable repair considering the age and milage of my car and how it never has any problems. Parts do eventually wear out and need changing.

The partner desperately needs a newer car and we’ve been holding off due to housing. Selling my car and hoping someone will pay $20 for his will give us additional funds to get a newer car, one that we can have faith in. Also, the job I’m currently crossing my fingers for is easily accessible through public transportation and we could have just one newer car for the two of us. We also currently have a third vehicle, a contractor van that isn’t in top shape but is far too useful to let go and would allow us the use of a second car as needed.

I was toying with the idea of selling my car earlier this year and had decided that it just wasn’t time to make that decision. But now as I look at the numbers for bringing my car back into Maryland, I just don’t feel like throwing that money away — for that is exactly what it is, money thrown away as it has no positive benefit, no mechanical improvement, for the car. We’ll have to pay part of those fees for a newer car and we will be getting a newer car wether or not I keep my car.

Why not save on fees/taxes and simplify to living with one car (the van really isn’t a day-to-day driving vehicle) and public transportation to work. I imagine it’ll save us money in insurance and maintenance in the end.

[The other big issue with my car is the lack of a/c. On days like today, with a heat index of 104 degrees, it makes selling the car sound like the only reasonable thing to do. For the record, I bought it in Wisconsin where I didn't need a/c.]

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 18th, 2006 at 4:51 pm and is filed under general, vehicles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.