What I have been doing instead of blogging:
1) Thorougly cleaning all parts of this apartment except the bedroom. The bedroom right now is a hopeless purgatory of dirty laundry, dust bunnies, and "undecidable" objects removed from the other (clean!!) areas of our home. What is an "undecidable" object, you may ask? An "undecidable" object is one which we have trouble finding a home for. Examples: one piece of gold posterboard, left over from Nate's poster session last semester. It is in perfectly good condition, so our Thrifty sides cannot condone throwing it away. Yet, it is awkward to store- i.e., doesn't fit neatly in a desk drawer with the other "office supplies" like pens and glue sticks- so right now it is cohabiting on our bedroom floor with one Tired Worn-Out Sheepskin Steering Wheel Cover. (don't ask)
2) Filing all our financial records for the past 7 months or so.
3) Undertaking a little project: Is Driving Our Car Significantly Cheaper than Driving a New Car? Answer: Why, yes! Yes it is!! Sylvia has had some Issues the past few months ($1450 in Dec. for transmission, $130 in April for oil pressure sender, $641 last week for radiator/thermostat) so I was sort of wondering, is this REALLY cheaper then driving a new (or newer used) car? I went through all our records and added up depreciation, registration, insurance, gasoline (which I estimated using a cool spreadsheet I found giving average weekly gas prices in the US broken down by region and grade), and maintenance (around $6000!! wow!!) and concluded that in the 45 months/ 62775 miles we have driven our car, she has cost about $386/month or about $0.28/mile.
According to AAA's brochure Your Driving Costs 2006, the average cost of owning and operating a new small sedan is about $521/month or $.42/mile. AAA isn't completely clear about how their model works; the website says the model is based on driving a new car 75,000 miles in 5 years, but it's not totally clear if we buy this car in 2006 or in 2001. (They use $2.405 as the price per gallon of gas- that was the average price at the end of 2005. I think this would be a gross underestimate of gas prices from 2006-2010. But it would certainly overestimate the price from 2001-2005. Maybe we should assume the AAA car is driven from 2003-2007, to average things out? If so, the figures would be a fairly good basis for comparison to Sylvia, who was purchased in Aug. 2002.) I even tweaked the AAA figures down a bit, realizing some of their numbers would be higher than ours (insurance, registration, etc.) and Sylvia was still a good bit cheaper. And, small sedans were by far the cheapest category listed- if we drove a medium or large sedan or an SUV, we'd be paying a LOT more.
So, would we be better off now (financially) if we'd bought a new car in Aug. 2002? Almost certainly not. Was there a USED car out there somewhere in America that would have required fewer repairs and been a better value? Sure there was. But 1) we're not clairvoyant and we're not car experts, so we could hardly foresee the future of those used cars we looked at back then, and 2) there's no surefire (surefire! I like that word!!) way to calculate the optimal point on the purchase price/maintenance curve for used cars. We spent about $3100 on Sylvia (including a small warranty) and close to $6000 in maintenance (including everything routine, like oil changes, tires, inspection, brakes, etc.) We could have spent $9100 on a car in 2002 whose value today would be about $4250 (assuming 15%-20% depreciation per year). While we probably wouldn't have spent all of $4250 maintaining such a vehicle, we didn't HAVE $9100 in 2002 so we would have had to take out a car loan which would have meant several hundred (over a thousand?) dollars in interest. Or we could have bought a $6000 used car which would have cost less in depreciation but more in repair bills...? And on and on, you see how it goes. I can't see any options that are likely to be significantly cheaper, and most options seem to be more expensive.
THAT'S for all you people out there who ask us why we drive such a clunker. ;-)
4) Reading: The Art of Mathematics, Boundaries in Marriage, and Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner. Well, okay, I read about the first 6 pages of that last one before Giving Up. Shout-out to any of you literary major types out there: any help with reading Faulkner? See, I feel like I ought to be able to read Faulker and enjoy it because he is writing about the South, and he is early-twentieth-century American, which are supposed to be things I can relate to (unlike, for example, the Ancient Greeks? I never did get along with the ancient Greeks.) I like the style and I am Happy that it's about the South, but somehow the reading does not seem to be a project I can continue for a full 300 pages. I tire easily. Perhaps I'm just out of practice...?
I also read blogs- um, A Lot.
5) Socializing with people we haven't had time to socialize with all year. (Hi!)
6) Enjoying our fifth anniversary here and here. :-) We had car trouble on the way down (radiator- see above) that scared me into thinking we wouldn't make it (and the hotel charge was non-refundable!! eee!!) but I Prayed a lot and tried to have a good attitude of "however this goes, I will still have a Greatful spirit." I think almost losing our chance to go made me even more thankful for the nice trip we had. :-) Dinner was awesome and our hotel room was awesome, and walking around New Hope and Lambertsville was really fun. (Happy 5 years, honey. :-))
7) Helping out with Girls' Bible Study at church and other things (like a video scavenger hunt last night.)
8) Visiting my old work buddies at NCC.
Okay that's enough (boredom for you) for now! Bye!
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5 comments:
If you split up your pronouns correctly, number 5 would say "I" not "we" and, on top of that, probably wouldn't even exist, because my half of "we" gets socially shafted by the last sentence in point 4 just as much as by your tests, quizzes, and homework. Just a thought.
As for cars, you can try but don't waste too much of your time. Nobody but me will listen :) Everybody will constantly generalize to try to disprove a point in your theory and rationalize why they're better having their new cars. Case in point was our walk to dinner on Thursday. You explained this and to two physics people had nothing better to say than "But that's not true because my car...." They should know that averages can't be generalized form individual points. If their cars are better than what ours has been then they wouldn't have been saying that you were wrong with their cars as a counterexample, which is generalizing points to the average, and they instead would have said that they were lucky dispite having new cars and isn't it great that they beat the averages. That makes me think that they have some other reason for their blabbering, either not wanting to be "wrong" in having bought their new cars (because every less than positive statement is an accusation in our culture) or having a preconceived notion that new cars must be better (a common thought in our culture), rather than actually evaluating the method of analysis on some more general level. One thing I know for sure is that you can't convince irrational people of anything.
I do believe that this weather is making me cranky....
Re: Faulkner.
Like James Joyce or Virginia Woolf, Faulkner is an acquired taste even for those of us who are meant to enjoy reading difficult works of literature. So if you aren't getting through to him you can console yourself with the thought that it was not meant to be.
Frankly, and not to discourage your attempts at Faulkner, but I generally relate much better to the ancient Greek stuff than to him. Peter might not agree, but I would liken Faulkner to the more esoteric branches of mathematics; interesting, if you're into that sort of thing, and perhaps even philosophically intriguing, but not actually useful.
my own car quandry continues to be that of the classic college student: is it less expensive for me to bum off my parents and use their car, or to be responsible and purchase my own? i think i will be a bum until that option is lost to me, which will probably happen sometime this summer.
as for faulkner, i will have to suspend my recommendation until i fully experience the joys of my class on hemmingway, faulkner, and steinbeck in the fall.
ps-- are you and nate coming back to camp this summer?
-lw
I like Hemmingway. :-)
Nate is going to camp the week after we will be there, because he has a conference in Colorado to attend during our week of camp. He is bummed. :-(
See you soon!
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