Auto blues

I don't love my car.  Actually, at the moment, I hate my car.

I only bought it because my company offered me a company car or a cash equivalent, and of course I immediately took the cash and then bought the cheapest car I could find.

So I tell myself, when I have to spend money on the car, that I am still coming out ahead.  However, in the past week it will have cost me £1,685 (US $2,685).  That's more than I paid for the darn thing!

I've had problems with the exhaust system since I bought it (it was 10 years old, after all) and I've had it patched twice, but the problem kept recurring.  In the UK, you have to pass an annual safety test (MOT) and I knew it would fail, so last week I spent £300 replacing the whole thing.

Thus I took it for its MOT reasonably confident it would be fine...only to be told a shock absorber was leaking, which meant I had to replace both of them, and some part required to replace them was frozen, so needed to be replaced as well, and it came to £335 -- plus £35 for the test!!

I then took my test result to the post office and gave them another £220 for property tax. (Why you renew your car tax at the post office is beyond me.)

And when I got home, I sent a cheque for £790 for my insurance for a year, which is slightly less insane than what I paid last year.  (The UK works on a "no claims" policy, and of course coming from the States I did not have any "no claims" so for the first two years I was paying the same price as a 16-year-old who just got his license!)

Usually when you buy a car, the MOT, tax disc, and insurance are due at different times, making it a little more palatable.  When I bought the car, I had to get it inspected, taxed, and insured all at the same time, and thus each year renew it all at the same time.  So I expected to pay about £1,100 for the car, but that's not to say I budgeted for it...