Warranty

When we were first married, Justin's car died. At the time it didn't really matter, because he was working out of town all the time - I would take him to the airport early Monday morning and pick him up Friday evening. We were perfectly fine being a one-car couple. However, after a couple months he started working in town again and I started substitute teaching. We realized that we couldn't make it with only one car, my schedule was crazy due to times different schools met and Justin needed to be able to drive back and forth between his office and different clients.

Even though we had hoped to not have to purchase a new car for a while, we found ourselves in the market for a car. Our budget was pretty limited since we had both just gotten out of school so we knew that we were definitely not getting a new car. We went to CarMax and test drove a few cars before making our decision to get a 2002 Ford Focus ZX5 (this was back in 2004). We wouldn't say now we are thrilled that we ended up buying this car, although we are pretty happy about what we bought with the car - an extended warranty.

Almost 2 years after we bought the car (and just days before we were moving to Houston), we realized something was wrong and took it in. For $50, a problem with the air compressor was fixed. The day after picking it back up (and the day we were leaving to drive here) one of the windows was rolled down and wouldn't go back up. Without charging us another $50 (since we had just picked up the car the day before) the window was fixed.

Lately we have been noticing that the engine in this car has been running really loud and has been sputtering while we drive. It was tempting to just take the car in for a tune-up somewhere, but then we realized that the warranty is still good so we took it into the nearest CarMax instead. I can't even keep track of all the things that they found wrong (one of the reasons we aren't so stoked about the car - I've never had all these problems with my civic that is 3 years older). What I can keep track of is what we are having to pay for these repairs.

$50

We have broken motor mounts, and something having to do with the timing belt is even covered by the warranty (which means we are getting a new timing belt which is pretty expensive and belts themselves are usually not covered), as well as something else having to do with the air compressor is messed up. Over $1500 worth of repairs and we are paying only $50.

It isn't all the time that I think a warranty is worth it - I bought an extended warranty on my civic when my factory warranty was up and I don't think it ever paid for itself. But this warranty has definitely paid for itself - about 3 times over, in fact.

We will be so happy when we get the car back later this week. It is so hard to have to share a car (in other words, we are so spoiled). Tomorrow morning we leave at 4:30 in the morning so I can take Justin to the airport and anyone that knows me very well knows that I am not a morning person. I have been working everyday this week and since Justin also went back to work this week, we have had to make quite a few adjustments on how we do things.