Money Lessons Learned the Hard Way
This is a guest post by Bucksome Boomer who writes about all things personal finance from one baby boomer’s perspective.
BAM! A rock was thrown up and hit the windshield. I jumped at the sudden noise, startled from daydreaming.
There did not appear to be any damage and I continued on to my destination. When I was able to carefully look at the glass, there was a tiny star near the bottom center.
This is not an unusual occurrence on the roads here in California. In the past, I’ve gotten these blemishes fixed for $50 –75. For some reason, maybe because it was out of sight out of mind, we ignored this one for several months.
That is we ignored it until one day the star grew arms. Yes, lines were traveling out from the original mark. Now, it was no longer a simple repair job. The windshield needed replacing.
At this point, there was no reason to hurry. Last month a trip to the car wash caused the cracks to travel and obscure the driver’s vision. My husband called several businesses for quotes and made an appointment with the best offer. The cost was now $250 total and they would come to our house.
Lessons learned
- Even personal finance bloggers make stupid money mistakes. Procrastination had a definite price in this situation. I would like to say it was just trying to delay gratification but that’s not true. The sad thing is this isn’t the first time I’ve done the same thing with a small windshield crack and had to replace the whole thing.
- Deferring repairs can result in higher bills. This is true of most things. A small leak can become a flood. A small crack can become the grand canyon. A small star can become a spider web of cracks.
As the saying goes, “Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do todayâ€. Next time, we’ll do something different.
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Tags: baby boomer, blemishes, bottom center, car wash, definite price, gratification, lessons learned the hard way, money lessons, money mistakes, out of sight, personal finance, procrastination, repair job, s vision, sad thing, spider web, stupid money, sudden noise, tiny star, windshield
9 People have left comments on this post
I've been there before. Now I am my mechanic's best friend. I try to keep up with basic maintenance on every thing that I own. Thanks for sharing a personal experience to give us all a reminder!
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jmichelsen
Reply:
June 1st, 2010 at 4:38 am
I think we have all been there before, it's really easy to let those little things slip out of our minds. I know I don't keep up with oil changes on my car and it will bite me in the butt sooner or later.
Khaleef, you're a a great example of what to do. We're good at keeping up with routine maintenance, just not the unexpected events.
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On our minivan, we have a Star crack that we need to replace before it grows an arm too…
I'm not sure, but I think our insurance company (Geico), may even provide a service to do it. I'll have to call soon, thanks indirectly for the reminder!!!
Money Reasons, cracks aren't covered by my current plan but I've had coverage in the past.
You'll want to get that fixed before it gets to hot because that tends to get the crack growing. Glad to be a reminder!
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Jesse- have you noticed how close you are to 200k!!!!
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Jesse Michelsen
Reply:
June 7th, 2010 at 10:03 am
I broke 200k! I can’t believe it 🙂 thanks for noticing, I’ve been so busy lately I haven’t even looked at my rank lol
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