Dirty Money

We paid our final car payment in January.  Woohoo!  The PLAN was to then set aside that car payment each month and save up to buy our next car with cash a la Dave Ramsey style.  And then God laughed at our plans.

We had to replace our dishwasher about five months ago which ate into our savings.  The "extra" car payment helped us build that back up but we were basically going into debt by borrowing from ourselves.  And then Bill blew a tire.  And you can't just replace one tire, especially when you fail the Lincoln test.  And so we ended up buying four new tires.  Throw Christmas and a bunch of birthdays in there and the Ramsey approach to money just flew out the window.  Fortunately, the window didn't need replacing so we saved some money there.

And then it happened.  It smelled funny.  Like burning rubber.  And I had images of my laundry room/master closet/linen closet (they're all one big room) bursting into flames.  I've seen my mom take apart appliances because there was no savings and we needed things to work.  If she could do it, I could do it.  Well, I could make my husband do it.  I was sure a belt in my faithful 14 year old washing machine was about to go out.  Turns out, there is no belt in my model.  It would most likely be the doo-hickey thingie according to the local appliance repair guy.  So we took the doo-hickey thingie out and brought it to the store to replace it.  Husband puts in new doo-hickey thingie and the washing machine is started.  And it smells like a huge tire bonfire.  And I'm sure that we're going to die AND lose all of our clothes in a fire or pass out from the horrible smell.  We paid $30 to replace that smelly part and were told a new engine would be around $100.  But what if we spent $100 now and then something else broke?  The agitator?  The transmission?  The hickey-doo? 



RIP 1997-2011



I'm frugal.  I hate to spend large amounts of money if I don't have to.  Buuut...we bought this washing machine in 1997.  It's been in five homes in five different cities, two different states.  Maybe it's time to consider replacing it.

I'm not just frugal, I'm particular.  Some may say obsessive.  Others may say anal.  I say I like to do my research so we get the best in the price range we can afford.  I spent three hours researching washing machines and we were able to take home our new workhorse today.  Our SUV was big enough to shove that baby back there.  What we didn't think about was whether or not the door was wide enough to get the machine in.  Oops.

No doors or husbands were injured.  We did end up taking it out of the box while it was still in the garage though.  Then came the hard part.  Bill and I nearly killed ourselves trying to get it up the stairs, but we made it.  I don't have any pictures of that but I will say that my hamstrings are screaming at me right now.

There are 101 pages of instruction on how to use my new machine.  Granted, there are three languages but I had to sit and study and still ended up doing something wrong the first time I washed a load of clothes.

And here she is.  My new BFF.  The one I will spend many hours with.  She is also very particular and only drinks the finest of drinks.



Thankfully I was almost done with my Costco sized bottle of Tide.  Now I have to buy this stuff.  High maintenance I tell ya.

But, she sings to me.  She sings when the power is on and she sings when she's done washing.  And I'm singing knowing that everyone will have clean chonies very soon.