And the Van is Gone

Hubby has had his van for 19 years.  He paid cash for it way back when, then treated it like his baby since then.  Over the years he has done repairs as they have been needed, but when the air conditioning went out and the head gasket blew and the shop gave him an estimate of $2500 to fix it (with a book value of about $800 in good working order!) he decided it was time to give it up.  I put an ad for it on Craigslist, my old tried and true place to sell things, and got one response.  Then I put an ad for it on Facebook Marketplace and got more than 20 responses.  We sold it to the first guy who looked at it and came close to our price and off he hauled it!  From now on I will definitely go through FB Marketplace to sell stuff.

Car Maintenance

My car told me it needed an oil change so off I went to the dealership today.  I know I could save money doing the oil change myself but...ick.  I did this when I was a poor college student, now I just want to pay someone else to do it.  I did call around to oil change places when I first got the car because it needs synthetic oil and those cheap oil change places charge an arm and a leg for special oil so I take it to the dealership which has the cheapest price for my required oil change. 

Fortunately, after each oil change at the dealership they email me a survey which gives me $10 off on my next oil change so it was only $30 with a coupon.  When I checked in, the girl popped off the engine air filter and said it looked kind of dirty and asked if I wanted to have them change it but when they told me it would be $95(!) I declined and immediately ordered the filer from Amazon when I got home for $18.  I can definitely pop in an air filter and save $75 in the process!

tldr; when it comes to car maintenance, call around for the best prices, DIY the maintenance that you are able to, and use Google/YouTube--there's info and videos on all kinds of car topics there.

On the DMV Merry-Go-Round

Well it's time for us to register our car here in Nevada.  Although we have been here for months, we didn't change our registration because we decided that if we weren't able to buy a house here, we wouldn't be staying and would probably end up moving either to Georgia or back to Washington.  Now that we bought our house and moved in last month, we knew that we had to register our car but we have been so busy we put it off until now.  Yesterday hubby went to get his new Nevada license (you need to be licensed in the state before you register your car) since our current tags were going to expire at the end of this month but when the nice police officer pulled us over today, he told us that our current registration had expired two days ago (I pulled out the registration and sure enough it expired on the 19th, even thought the tags say August 2012--we figured it meant August 31. It didn't).  At least we didn't get a ticket, he just said to hurry over to the DMV and get the car registered ASAP.  We knew we needed a smog check and went to our mechanic who looked at some codes--the check engine light was on--and said it won't pass the smog check.  So this is what we are doing tomorrow:

• Go get an official smog check (we can't get a registration extension without a no-pass paper from the smog check people).  Cost $20.
• Go to the DMV with our flunked smog check paper and get a ten-day temporary registration so we can get everything fixed (mechanic said he can't fix the car without the temporary registration because he has to drive it around after the fix and they can't drive it if the registration is expired).  Cost $1.  
• Run to the assessor's office and get a voucher that will pay the registration fee because hubby is a retired veteran.  Cost: free.
• Take the car back to the mechanic so he can fix the car.  Cost: $200 (ouch).
• Take the fixed car back for another smog check.  Cost: $20.
• Take the car back to the DMV and get it registered.  Cost: hopefully free with the voucher although there may be a fine because our registration is already expired.

Ugh.