Broken Things in a Modern World — Life is Expensive!

A few weeks back I mentioned that we needed to sink a lot of money into getting our pickup truck repaired... it had been sitting in our driveway for several months with a basketload of repairs waiting to be done...

In some ways, it served as a sad reminder that modern life has gotten so expensive that we can't always afford to keep up with it!

In time, we managed to get together the money needed for the repairs... even though that money had originally been earmarked for the 2023 property tax bill. But we need the truck to haul things for our gardening and homesteading efforts... so we went ahead and got things taken care of.

About US $2,200 and a new suspension and new brakes later, we thought all would be well and good... the truck is a model year 2003, and it has been a really good working vehicle for us!

Not so Fast...

As it turned out... that was not everything.

There were some old electrical problems that needed fixing... things that "never been quite right" since many years ago when the last radio was installed. One irritating quirk being that we'd be driving along and all of a sudden none of the gauges or instrumentation would work anymore.

Thankfully, we have a highly reputable "major shop" on the outskirts of town, and they felt they would be able to fix a problem six previous mechanics had not been able to... which had something to do with "rebooting the motherboard" that drives all the electronics.

But wait... there's more!

As part of their inspection of the truck, they discovered that the truck's driveshaft was essentially only holding together thanks to a thin sliver of metal and a total disbelief in the theory of gravity!

Meaning — in English — that they were surprised we hadn't just dropped the driveshaft on some road, while going somewhere. Last I mentioned this, it was going to cost an additional $2,000... but the shop folks felt certain they'd be able to round up a refurbished used driveshaft somewhere... for maybe half that much.

So... after two weeks and change at the 2nd mechanic's, we finally got a call today that the truck had been fixed and was ready to be picked up. Grand total: $1,450, thank you, come again.

But it could have been worse!

So... $3,700 later, we have a working truck again!

Could we have bought a used truck for that amount of money? Possibly, but there would have been no guarantee that we wouldn't have had to spend a bunch of money getting that vehicle in working order... seems like everything costs a lot of money, these days.

For now, we're grateful to have our truck back... and we just have to cross our fingers that it holds together for a while and that we find a way to round up the money we will need for the property taxes, come March on 2023.

Life is expensive!

Thanks for reading, and have a great remainder of your week!

How about YOU? Does it ever feel like the cost to fix broken things escalates much faster than our ability PAY for those repairs? Does the cost of living, in general, seem out of control? Do leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — NOT A CROSSPOST!!!)
Created at 20220628 23:03 PDT
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