Why I "Have A Thing For Old Cars"... Or How People Want You To Stay Poor

After a long day at the beach, sitting down next to my car at the side of the road, waiting for the tow truck after it died. This was on the one year anniversary of getting my car.

My car is like an old person with arthritis. Its bones creak and groan. It isn't broken, it just makes funny noises. Everything is working properly, it just... is noisy. When I pulled up to pay at a parking garage, the worker there said "I see your car is in the middle of dying". No, it isn't dying. It just is noisy.

After that happened, when I next went to my mechanic, I asked him to take a look at my car to make sure those noises aren't problematic and signifying that it needs fixing. My mechanic said that there's nothing wrong, that the car is just old and the parts are old, so they make some noise even if not broken. I liken it to an arthritic elderly person groaning when their joints are hurting. My mechanic said, "You seem to have a thing for old cars, so this is going to be something you'll tend to have happen." 

I was amused. Because I don't "have a thing for old cars". I mean, I can see why my mechanic might think that. My first car was a 2008 Chrysler Town and Country... and when that died, my second car was... a 2008 Chrysler Town and Country (slightly different model though).

I explained to my mechanic that I don't actually particularly want old cars. However, I do have an issue, because the "powers that be" seemingly conspire to keep me poor. I'll get back to that in a second, but I first want to explain how being poor keeps you poor.

Let me present to you the Sam Vines Boot Theory of Socio-Economic Unfairness. 

The prolific author, Terry Pratchett, is full of wonderful lines, like his one that I quote in my foraging classes "All mushrooms are edible. Once." But this quote from his book, Men at Arms, is profound in its simplicity, how well it explains how being poor tends to keep you poor, which is often a never ending cycle.

“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. 

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”

This type of thing comes up over and over again in life, sometimes just by the very nature of things, and not someone specifically making life harder for poor people. But sometimes, it is the actions and policies of people and organizations that seem to try to intentionally keep poor people poor.

This episode about disability benefits in the US shows just how much the same benefits that are supposed to help people financially end up penalizing them. 

• People who get disability benefits are not allowed to have more than $2000 in their bank account ever, or their disability benefits are stopped and in some cases they have to pay them back. One of the women interviewed talked about how her car is old. When it dies, she won't be able to buy a new one because she can't get a car for under $2000. She also can't afford to pay for repairs that cost more than $2000. If you even get a birthday gift or charity into your bank account and it goes even one dollar over $2000, you lose your benefits. So if you have an emergency, since you can't even have a basic emergency fund, your only choice really is taking on credit card debt, which is a bad spiral and makes you more and more poor.
  
  
• If you work and earn more than a certain (very low) amount, even by one dollar, you lose your benefits. So you're incentivized not to work because you are likely worse off financially if you work.

But back to my life. And my car.

As a single, poor, disabled mom, I fortunately am able to benefit from certain government benefits and scholarships.

I get legal aid to deal with my divorce and custody issues (still not finished years later).

I get disability payments for myself.

I used to get child support from the government because my ex wasn't paying it (and then he owed it to the government).

I get scholarships to my son's school and certain programs my kids have been in.

But in every single one of them, if you have a savings account, it doesn't matter how much is in it, you're immediately ineligible for any of that aid.

And for most of them, other than disability payments (I think, I'm not sure about), you are allowed to have one car in the family. And it cannot be worth more than $8500. (And cars are really expensive here, even the second hand market.) If your car is worth more than that, sorry, too bad, no help.

Know how much my car cost? 

My 16 year old car cost me $7200.

So do I like old cars? No, not particularly. But if I got a newer car, it would cost more than $8500, especially if it was large enough to fit my family and enabled me to sit without being injured. So I basically have 3 choices. 

• Get a car that is a little bit newer (like a 2012 car), which costs a little more money up front, and spend a little less on repairs, but because it would put me a little bit over the ridiculous limit set by these agencies, I'd be ineligible for legal aid, school scholarships, and when it was relevant, child support from the government. (I no longer get that because I get disability for myself, and you can't get both). 
  
  
• The smartest financial decision generally is to buy a car that is maybe 5 years old so it functions well and barely needs any repairs, so while you pay more upfront, the total cost is lower over the years. However, this, too, would make me ineligible for any aid.
  
  
• Or... I keep on using 16 year my old car with bits and peices breaking on a regular basis, which means a steady expense of repairs. My old car died after six months. This one, in the last year I've had to fix oil leaks, water leaks, brake plates, shock absorbers, shock absorber casings, some things connected to the axels, the windows, the air conditioning, the stereo, and the most expensive repair of all, needing to rebuild the transmission from scratch, which cost about 40 percent of the intial cost of my car. This means that so far my car cost twice what I originally paid for it, once I include the repair prices in the total cost. But this way, at least, I get to keep legal aid.

It absolutely is ridiculous from a frugal perspective to have a car this old. 5 years newer would be much smarter, but 10 years newer would be even smarter.

But if I have any newer of a car I'd lose much more money in legal aid, school scholarships, etc.

The system conspires to keep you poor if you're poor, because let's say I was Samuel Vimes and someone managed to get more expensive boots, like maybe someone had compassion and donated the leather boots to me, I'd no longer be able to get anything from the Ankh Morkpork soup kitchen the shelter that let me sleep there threw me out because of the boots which signified I was "too rich to need help".

My mechanic asked me whether it would just be worth it to spend less money on repairs and do without the aid, but the aid is worth so much more financially than I spend on repairs. 

And then, on top of that, because my credit is shot because of divorce stuff I can't get into, I couldn't even get a loan to pay for the more-expensive but cheaper-in-the-long-run car.

Once all my divorce things are finished and all my kids are 18 and out of school and I won't need scholarships for them anymore (unless college scholarships also factor in the parents' cars) and hopefully my credit score will be better, and/or I could actually have a savings account to save up money for one, and then I plan on doing the financially smart thing that will save me more money in the long run, and get a relatively new (like 5 year old) car.

But until then, well, I guess I'll just keep including car repair funds into my budget. And large amounts at that, just in case.