There is never a good time to have car issues ❤️‍🩹

January 2023 has been a rough month in terms of my car. This is now the third time in one month having to take my car to the shop to get worked on. I haven't had issues like this with my car for a long time, but now that I'm about to eclipse 167k total miles on the body and around 111k on the engine, things are starting to break. I'm not ready to purchase a new car yet, as much as I'd love one. So I've just been paying out of pocket for all of the issues that come up.

The year began with a flat tire, welcome to 2023 I guess. The car was out of commission for a week waiting on the new tire to come in, but luckily I was reimbursed for most of the costs due to a warranty.

Less than 2 weeks later my car broke down on me and I was without it for four days. I ended up having to pay $627 for a new alternator. It ran fine for three days, but then something else decided to fail and make my car undrivable.

The latest issue is another busted rear spring this past Thursday night. I've already replaced both rear springs in the last five years, one of them is less than two years old. The older one just randomly broke again while I was driving, so now I'm replacing both of them just to be safe. They cost about $200 a piece, so there's another $400.

Thank goodness I wasn't in the middle of an Instacart order when this happened, oh wait I was. I luckily was able to deliver the groceries and make it back to the body shop before my car gave out on me all the way again. I then had to walk over a mile in the dark from the shop back to my downtown apartment.

^{As much as I'd love to have a lowered car, mine is definitely not supposed to look like this. The left is the front suspension, which is fine versus the back which is non-existent.}

I also noticed a new whistling sound every time that I accelerated. It was as if the turbo on my car had gotten louder, but that's not something a new alternator makes happen. I knew that yet again there was something else not right. I'm thankful for my skillful ears because they are what helped the shop find that I had a faulty PCV valve. When these things go bad, your engine will corrode at a rapid rate and that obviously is not good. It was essential to get a new one. This will cost me about $800. Now we are up to $1,200 total for this trip.

I just started my new job driving for Instacart. I've been making some pretty good money and enjoying doing it too. In just two weeks I've already earned $640. Sadly, my car repairs for the month are now up to around $1,850 and I've had to miss nearly a week of potential work.

The shop said I should have my car back once again midway through this week. Sitting around idle just plain sucks, especially when I'm dying to get back out there and resupply my depleting funds by working through Instacart. I'm not joking when I saw I actually really love this job and the money it provides me will be very helpful once I'm not having to spend all of it on car repairs.

Even with these setbacks, I still have a great deal of savings, but I really would rather not have to sell a bunch of crypto at these prices, even with some slight pumps this month. I'm going to rely on my cash reserves for this one, so let's hope that HIVE continues to rise in the price instead of declining once more so that this will be a wise decision by me.

I'm really (like REALLY) hoping that this will be the last car issue of 2023. I'm going to keep pushing this car until it isn't fixable anymore. Now that I'm driving a lot doing these deliveries, any potential issues that were set to come in the future will now be accelerated. It's part of the job and it won't make me quite what I'm doing.

As per usual, I plan to update again once I get my car back and see how it runs. I have faith that the shop will get my Audi back to working order and I can get back to earning $25/hr doing Instacart. I'm not worried about the money, because I know I can always make more. I'm glad that I am able to remain positive even during stressful situations such as this one.

Thanks for the support, my dear friends!