A few years ago my old car had come to the end of its life and it needed to be taken out and put down. This required me to play the "let me check with my manager" game at the local dealership. What fun! However, as a result of that exercise, I somehow ended up with a car that was reliable and didn't require me to fork over wads of cash each month to my mechanic to fix the latest problem du jour with my vehicle. Over the last six months that I owned my old car, I had to bring it in for repairs eight different times. The other thing that I ended up with besides a new car was the excitement of having to make monthly payments for the next 4 years. Oh, and by the term "excitement", I actually meant soul sucking dread. Car payments are the succubus of loan payments. Unlike a house that allegedly gains value with time, cars actually decay around you with a palpable odor until you make your last payment, upon which they tend to immediately disintegrate into a pile of snickering dust.Recently, I made the final payment on my "new" car. A few days later, I received in the mail a piece of paper called the "title". This is a document, that once in the owner's hands, almost gives the car approval to spontaneously combust. Somehow, though, my car is still holding up. It starts when I turn the key in the ignition and it propels itself forward and backward when I move around the PRNDL stick. I don't know how much longer I have before my vehicle's ultimate demise, but just in case, I am looking to sell my blood and unnecessary internal organs to start collecting funds for the down payment of my next vehicle, which will probably be needed in the next week.
