Taxes and Cars

Well we filed our taxes about two weeks ago. I had been planning to use Studio Tax, a free tax program to do our taxes, but a friend offered to do them and efile them for us. We took him up on his generous offer and today we got our cheques in the mail. Two nice fat, refund cheques.

Good thing too. Yesterday, Sunday while out grocery shopping, something in the drive train of the Chevy Venture failed. Big time. In the grocery parking lot, it failed with a horrible snap and grinding noise. While in gear the van would no longer move and while in park it would still move.

CAA towed it up to my mechanic who was open and working on a Sunday. Actually, it's a father and son operation and the father is in Florida. Since there's only one guy in the shop, of course it has got completely crazy busy. He hasn't had a chance to look at it but did say that if it was the transmission, a used replacement would be $2,200 to $2,800. I'm not willing to put that kind of money into a 1997 vehicle. If the repairs are going to be $1,000, we'll get it fixed, otherwise we will have to find a new vehicle. Well, a used vehicle. Maybe an older, used vehicle.

This would of been easier in a year or two, but we're in a way better spot than we would of been six months ago.

A number of friends of ours have Ford Focus Wagons and they all seem pretty happy with them. My quick check online tonight seems to indicate that 3 -4 year old models run $10,000 to $14,000. More than we can afford right now. We still have $23,000 in debt and I don't want to put that up more.

Up here in Canada, car prices seem higher than in the states for cars. The $3,000 - $4,000 that we can put towards the car will not buy too much. I'll be putting feelers out to all the people I know to see if anyone has a decent cheap car for sale.

Ah well. Time to sleep on this. Good night.