Budget thoughts needed

AprilZ81 · October 2015

Have you tried making your budget based on your bare minimum salary and then using overtime, gas, and other income to work towards other goals?

Use your base income for utilities, groceries, child care and basic entertainment/lifestyle expenses.

Then take your "extra" income extra month and work on one goal at a time in the order of priorities. If the ROTHs are your top focus, then all "extra" income goes into an account for the ROTHs until they are at the contribution level you want. Then move on to insurance expenses, then vacation and on down the line.

I see where you are getting stressed out and not feeling like you have any money. It really does seem "silly" when you have no debt and your house is paid for.

I would also guess that with a debt free financial situation, significant land assets, 100,000 cash ready to invest and your ages it might be overkill to be putting 17-19% into retirement while you have a child in daycare.

How did you make this all work when you had a house payment? Was it the jump in maxing out the ROTHs that caused you too feel cash poor?

brij2006 · October 2015

jtmh2012 said:

lbonga1 said:

Even with driving the car 30k miles a year, I would think you should be able to keep it longer than 18-24 months, unless you're buying cars that already have over 100k miles.
I'll be honest, I don't get this either. I have a 2008 Impala with just over 130,000 miles on it. I keep up with the routine maintenance and it has essentially been problem free, but I bought it new. Even if I had to toss $1-2k or so toward repairs now and then, it is still cheaper than replacing a vehicle every 1.5-2 yrs.

We buy vehicles that have over 100k miles for him. He's a total car guy (like modifies his toy car, does his own maintenance, and loves tinkering, etc), so right now he has a 2005 Dodge Magnum with 120,000 miles on it. We bought it with 105k, 6 months ago, for $7,000. Our goal is to have this one last him 2 years though, then we will replace again with about a 5-10k vehicle that most likely is just over the 100k mile mark. But we have had to do about $1,500 in repairs since owning it. He just got an estimate yesterday for an issue with the exhaust, and the estimate was for $825 (he's not sure he can do the work himself, safely, with what's wrong).

My vehicle is a 2010 SUV with 65k miles, worth about $15k. We will probably keep it for 4-5 more years.

brij2006 · October 2015

For everyone about insulating the house. We have put in insulation as we remodel a room (if we re-did the plaster). So about 25% of the house in insulated. Our attic is a full walk up that is like a 3rd story. So there isn't a way to blow any insulation in. We have looked into ripping up the flooring up there and insulating from the top. The price estimate was $5k since the flooring would need completely replaced.
Another option we could look into is having insulation added behind the siding. When we investigated it a bit, they told us that we would have to replace our siding (we have aluminum that's 20 years old). The rough estimate for siding, insulation, and house wrap was $17-20k. We will likely eventually do that if we end up staying in the home. Our plans were to replace the siding and roof at the same time, and insulate from the outside in.

We also replaced all of the windows with energy efficient ones about 5 years ago, and our furnace is a very high efficient one.

@aprilz81 The jump to retirement investing is what is making us feel cash poor. H's take home pay was about $775/week before putting 10% toward retirement. So we're losing about $450/month from that contribution, then adding another $916/month to put toward the Roths.

Those 2 items then adding in health insurance and day care for DD, tithing 10% to church instead of 2%, and we're back to what we were paying monthly for 2 car payments, student loans, and mortgage. Which is why we're feeling like we aren't living any better than we were when we had payments.

It doesn't help that all at the same time we had the life insurance money come in, had our baby, paid off every penny of debt, and started contributing toward retirement. We took a few months to just "live" before starting the investing portion of things and it felt really nice. We were able to budget getting a few things we had been neglecting for the house, and go on our family vacation that we had originally planned not to go to since we were in debt payoff mode.

But now we're looking at the fact that we're losing $1500/month in retirement investing (it's not really losing, it just feels that way), and $500/month toward our tithe (I'm not willing to sacrifice this, but my H would happily give less), and then $700/month for DD's day care and health insurance. That totals to $2,700/month. Our debt payments were $1,740/month. So we're trying to squeeze another $1k out of the budget than we did before.

Don't take this the wrong way. By no means do I ever EVER want to go back into debt or wish we hadn't paid everything off. Our budget would look even worse if we were trying to do all of these things on top of paying down our debts. Now we can solely focus on building wealth for us, our family, and our future. Which is very very important to us. But we're just having a hard time trying to find the happy medium between balancing all of these and still saving for things along the way and living a little. By no means do we want to live a lavish lifestyle, but we have worked very hard to pay all of this stuff off and were really hoping and expecting there to be a bit more wiggle room in here to be able to do some updates to the house, save up to replace vehicles, and budget in items we need along the way. But we just aren't feeling like there's any room in it.

I keep telling H "screw it" and we just do a lot less toward retirement, but we do not touch the $100k nest egg and let it grow and build for retirement.

dragonstarjk · October 2015

I would contribute less to retirement, because it seems to me like you should be including that $100K in your future retirement plans. If you aren't going to touch it and are going to invest it, it should be part of your future retirement calculations. I really don't think you need to contribute 17-19% to retirement AND have the $100K investment.

Addressing some of the smaller things:

I would get on balanced billing for the heating. It will make your bill higher some months but it won't hurt as much in the winter months. It all comes out to paying the same over the course of the year, but it is more evenly distributed and easier to budget.

I really can't see replacing a vehicle every 1 1/2 to 2 years, unless you are buying junk vehicles. In that case, invest in something that is going to last much longer. I live in a rural area. 30K miles a year is actually kind of normal around here, especially for people working in the energy industry. This should not mean you have to replace a vehicle after 2 years, especially since you are also spending a lot to maintain them.

$100/month on clothes does seem like a lot to me; I mean, it's a nice luxury if it can be afforded, but this is something that I think could easily be reduced if you are trying to move funds around to other priorities. I budget $100/month on clothes but I would cut that if it meant I had to give up our vacation budget.

$660/month for food ($500 groceries, $100 eating out, $60 beef) seems pretty high for 2 adults and a baby. It sounds like this is an area that you could easily trim.

KAdams767 · October 2015

brij2006 said:

@aprilz81 The jump to retirement investing is what is making us feel cash poor. H's take home pay was about $775/week before putting 10% toward retirement. So we're losing about $450/month from that contribution, then adding another $916/month to put toward the Roths.
Those 2 items then adding in health insurance and day care for DD, tithing 10% to church instead of 2%, and we're back to what we were paying monthly for 2 car payments, student loans, and mortgage. Which is why we're feeling like we aren't living any better than we were when we had payments.
It doesn't help that all at the same time we had the life insurance money come in, had our baby, paid off every penny of debt, and started contributing toward retirement. We took a few months to just "live" before starting the investing portion of things and it felt really nice. We were able to budget getting a few things we had been neglecting for the house, and go on our family vacation that we had originally planned not to go to since we were in debt payoff mode.

But now we're looking at the fact that we're losing $1500/month in retirement investing (it's not really losing, it just feels that way), and $500/month toward our tithe (I'm not willing to sacrifice this, but my H would happily give less), and then $700/month for DD's day care and health insurance. That totals to $2,700/month. Our debt payments were $1,740/month. So we're trying to squeeze another $1k out of the budget than we did before.

Don't take this the wrong way. By no means do I ever EVER want to go back into debt or wish we hadn't paid everything off. Our budget would look even worse if we were trying to do all of these things on top of paying down our debts. Now we can solely focus on building wealth for us, our family, and our future. Which is very very important to us. But we're just having a hard time trying to find the happy medium between balancing all of these and still saving for things along the way and living a little. By no means do we want to live a lavish lifestyle, but we have worked very hard to pay all of this stuff off and were really hoping and expecting there to be a bit more wiggle room in here to be able to do some updates to the house, save up to replace vehicles, and budget in items we need along the way. But we just aren't feeling like there's any room in it.

I keep telling H "screw it" and we just do a lot less toward retirement, but we do not touch the $100k nest egg and let it grow and build for retirement.

This isn't meant to be snarky, but this feeling is part of the problem I have with living super modestly and throwing all extra money to paying off all debt. Once that is over, you are playing catch up on all of the things you delayed while you were hyper-focused on debt repayment. Retirement, savings for a new car, and things needed for your house are all line items in a regular budget. If you skip them for quite awhile, while it's awesome that you are debt free, you aren't going to be in a much better cash-flow position for awhile as you catch up on everything you put on the back burner.

brij2006 · October 2015

@KAdams767 The things we want to do to the house would be remodeling the kitchen, insulating and heating the garage to help with the draftiness of our house (it's on the west side where the wind hits first), and get new chairs and rug for the dining room table since I'm still working with my $20 garage sale find. So all of those items aren't NEEDS for our house. But they're things we wanted to get to eventually.

We were also hoping to replace our deep freezer since it's circa 1970 and freezer burns anything we put in it that isn't shrink wrapped, and get a snow blower for the winter. Both of which will cost around $600. We had hoped those would be things we could just cash flow monthly in our budget, but it's looking like that isn't going to be as easy to do.

simplyelise · October 2015

I definitely think you need to pull back some on retirement. Maybe run some retirement calculators and figure out how much you need to be contributing yearly to reach your goal instead of focusing so much on the percentages. But at the very least, dropping down to 12-13% right now when you already have 100k in investments seems completely reasonable. If you're looking to retire early then that changes things, but on your incomes you'd have to continue living pretty meagerly if you want to drop retirement age significantly.

The commute is what I see as killing your cashflow the most. But there are only two ways to fix it, move closer or work closer. And those are not always very easy to accomplish.

I think I would budget from your base + average overtime. Then for your commission, I'd use it to fund a couple of the yearly things like christmas and beef. Then I'd use your husband's two bonus paychecks for vehicle registration and part of the vacation fund. Whatever else you need for vacation I would do in a sinking fund. That should open up your monthly cash flow a bit.

I do agree that the $100/month for clothes seems high and the groceries+beef number is high too. But I know some of that is probably still adjusting to working and parenting full-time. Diapers alone could be making it higher than it seems like it should be!

I'm kind of all over the place here, but my final thought is to maybe step back and think about what "easing up" or "being generous" would look like for you. Would you like to have a little extra money for going out with family/friends? Would you like to be able to sponsor a child abroad or have some money each month? What money would you like to be able to spend on hobbies?

Right now you'll be giving $5246/yr to church, $1200/yr for clothes, $900/yr on entertainment, $1200/yr on eating out, $6720/yr on food/groceries, $3000/yr on travel. And funding retirement at over 15%. That is a lot looser than your debt payoff budget, I'm sure. Our takehome is just $100 less than your base+overtime and in our debt payoff mode, we do $5120/yr to church, $~50/yr for clothes, $0/yr for entertainment, $600/yr on eating out, $4080/yr on food/groceries, and $0/yr on travel. Your budget looks awesome and luxurious to me! So maybe back away from the monthly numbers for a moment and think about what else you'd like to be able to do to feel like you're not still paying off debt.

brij2006 · October 2015

You have a great point @simplyelise Maybe it would make us feel better if we looked at the overall picture rather than the monthly amounts.

For things like clothing, there are some months where we spend $20 on socks and undies but then H will get new basketball shoes (he's a size 16 so we rarely find them under $100) the next month. So we try to just roll this amount over into an envelope. Each month we budget $100, and whatever isn't spent we roll over to the next month. That way if there's a month where we get him basketball shoes, me running shoes, and DD the next size up in clothing (I always buy 2nd hand), then we aren't completely blowing the clothing budget for that month.
It's funny, because I feel like the clothing budget is very lean and is hard to keep within. But we spend $300/year alone in new shoes for H (steel toed boots for work, basketball shoes, and every day shoes). Then I run half marathons, so there's another $250/year in running shoes for me.

I'm in full agreement that I need to work hard at getting the grocery budget down. It's killing us. When we were in full debt payoff mode, I had it down to $325/month. That included me eating gluten free for the fertility issues I have. We also do a garden out back and I can and freeze items as well. So I need to get that part of the budget back in check. But I would meal plan, prep, and make every single thing we ate from scratch. I love to cook, but have had zero time to do it with a new baby and working full time. We both know we need to make that a priority again, even if it means I sneak away to the kitchen for 3 hours every Sunday.

vlagrl29 · October 2015

I would lessen retirement so you can "breath" just my opinion. If you got inheritance that you are rolling into your own retirement you are ahead of the game so to speak.

hoffse · October 2015

I would re-examine the car situation and maybe dig into that a little deeper. By replacing them as often as you have to, you guys are actually spending more on vehicles per month than most people with a car payment who are driving newer cars.

Let's say you get 24 months of use out of the car you paid $7K for 6 months ago. You have also spent $1500 in repairs so far, so your sunk cost at this point is $8,500. Even if you don't put a penny more into that car, you are paying $354 per month to own that vehicle if you only keep it for 2 years.

That's no different than having a car payment.

By doing it this way you are actually spending about twice as much as people who finance newer cars, but can keep them for 8-10 years because they are low-mileage.

I'm not trying to open up the new vs. old car debate again (we've done that plenty on this board), but I would revisit how you guys are doing vehicles for your H.

hoffse · October 2015

My only caution on lessening retirement is that you guys need to commit at least some portion of that $100K to be untouchable for the next 30 years. It would probably need to go in an after-tax account that you could easily tap into whenever, and I think it takes more self-control not to raid an account like than than a 401(k), because you won't get hit with any penalties if you do.

You guys have great self-control. Just mentally block it off so that it's off the table as an option whenever you are experiencing tight cash flow months.

I do think that if your employer contributions amount to 2-3% (or whatever they are), you can certainly drop your own contributions by that amount and still retire on time.

Also consider what kind of lifestyle you want in retirement. Now that you are debt free, your expenses outside of childcare are pretty much what you would have while retired. Consider how much extra money in today's dollars you would need to see in retirement to make your situation very comfortable. If you want to travel more or eat out more in retirement, include that. If you want to be able to spoil grandkids, include that.

I think you guys can probably cut back on retirement somewhat, but I really wouldn't plan based on a bare bones number.

EDIT: If you aren't sure you want to dedicate that 100K to retirement because you might end up using it for a new house or your DD's college, then I would absolutely not be counting it as part of my retirement portfolio.

simplyelise · October 2015

brij2006 said:

You have a great point @simplyelise Maybe it would make us feel better if we looked at the overall picture rather than the monthly amounts.

For things like clothing, there are some months where we spend $20 on socks and undies but then H will get new basketball shoes (he's a size 16 so we rarely find them under $100) the next month. So we try to just roll this amount over into an envelope. Each month we budget $100, and whatever isn't spent we roll over to the next month. That way if there's a month where we get him basketball shoes, me running shoes, and DD the next size up in clothing (I always buy 2nd hand), then we aren't completely blowing the clothing budget for that month.
It's funny, because I feel like the clothing budget is very lean and is hard to keep within. But we spend $300/year alone in new shoes for H (steel toed boots for work, basketball shoes, and every day shoes). Then I run half marathons, so there's another $250/year in running shoes for me.

I'm in full agreement that I need to work hard at getting the grocery budget down. It's killing us. When we were in full debt payoff mode, I had it down to $325/month. That included me eating gluten free for the fertility issues I have. We also do a garden out back and I can and freeze items as well. So I need to get that part of the budget back in check. But I would meal plan, prep, and make every single thing we ate from scratch. I love to cook, but have had zero time to do it with a new baby and working full time. We both know we need to make that a priority again, even if it means I sneak away to the kitchen for 3 hours every Sunday.

Shoes are the worst! We used a christmas gift card to get DH new work shoes this year, but we could both use new tennis shoes. Honestly we probably are a bit ridiculous with not replacing any clothes right now. Both of us were already pretty minimal in our wardrobes, so spending almost nothing on clothes has been rough. (When people were talking about going through their closets and tossing multiple bags of clothes I kept thinking I don't even have that many clothes total!!) I actually have bought a couple work dresses and two pairs of work pants from Plato's Closet, but I use my blow money for those. DH is legitimately wearing through the elbows on two of his dress shirts. When we're debt free we probably will have about $100/month in the clothes budget for a few months just so we can replace the crappy stuff we're wearing now. So I don't think $100/month is crazy, I just think you should try and view it as a fun category and not as a need limiting your cash flow.

vlagrl29 · October 2015

I don't think your grocery budget is bad. For the 3 of us its $450 per month and $100 on household items. I coupon on top of it.

formerlyGDaisy09 · October 2015

Ok, I think I'm caught-up.

I'd consider backing your retirement down to 15% including any vested employer match, you're in a great financial situation right now, and you'll be just fine contributing a little less to retirement. You want to enjoy your retirement later, but you also worked so hard to get out of debt so you can enjoy some of your money now.

Have you considered getting your H something a little more fuel efficient to drive in the snow? at a 100 mile commute every day this could actually make a big difference (I'm thinking something like a certified-preowned subaru cross-trek) I can't remember if there was a reason he needed a big car or not...but maybe he could leave a bigger vehicle on his job-site and use something better on gas for the bulk of the commute?

your cell-phone bill seems a little high (but not terribly).

Have you guys adjusted your W9s since your daughter arrived? we're not planning to do this until we've done our 2015 taxes and see where things land, but we do plan to adjust our allowances so that we're bringing home more every month and getting less back on our return (we're hoping for a really big return this year because we have the 30% incentive on both the solar install and new energy star windows, and a baby).

als1982 · October 2015

I could have missed it, but I don't recall seeing if you posted the current balance of your retirement accounts (excluding the $100,000). If it were me, that would be how I would decide whether to increase or decrease contributions. Assuming that you're not planning to retire early, are you on track to have an amount equal to your annual salary by 35? If you're behind, I'd put more than 15%. If you're already there or would be on track at 15% then I'd save at that rate. Personally, I would never drop below 15% unless there's a true emergency. (And I agree with others on the cars.)

brij2006 · October 2015

Here's what we have so far in accounts:

My Roth IRA: $23,500 (contributed max for 2014 already)

H's Roth IRA: $5,500 (contributed max for 2014 already)

H's 401k: I believe there's $6,000 in it.

Mutual Fund: $100,000

DD's 529: $20,000

Emergency Fund: $15,000

Here is also what we have in extra categorized items right now. These are not to be used for regular expenditures....

My Blow Money: $9,500

H's Blow Money: $9,500

Amount left for "giving" out of life insurance money: $19,595

We also still have about an additional $30,000 (depending how taxes play out) coming in when we close out my brothers' estate next month. Our intentions are to just let that sit in savings for a "brij is a money hoarder and feels more comfortable with it sitting there just in case" account.

The blow money is ours to do with it what we want, without recourse from the other person. But once it's gone, it's gone. So both of us are pretty much afraid to tap into it.

* I really appreciate you all taking a look at this with me. I know that our circumstances may feel like "poor you" and I really hope that it does not come across that way. But being in the situation we are in right now can either be a great blessing or burden to people, and right now we are feeling like it is this huge weight we have that we want to make sure we do right with it. We want to make sure we are setting ourselves up for future success and do something noble with the legacy my brother left for me. The last thing we want to do is get ourselves into a pickle where we did not plan properly and have to take out debt again. Which you all know me, that would be a cold day in Hell.

Xstatic3333 · October 2015

I think that if the $100,000 is mentally earmarked for retirement only (or perhaps a new paid off house that you consider part of your retirement plan) then I agree with the many PP who would dial back the retirement savings a percent or two so that you have a bit more wiggle room to play around with.

One other thing that I might consider if I were in your shoes is putting the additional $30,000 in a savings account but pulling from it to fully fund both of your Roth's for the next few years. This way you would be giving that money a chance to grow a bit. Additionally, although we don't like to think about it around here, you could withdraw the contributions penalty-free in the event a of true, earth-shattering emergency. As someone who thinks a lot about worst case scenarios, I find that aspect of Roths comforting even though I never plan to take advantage of it. Funding your Roths this way for some of your "daycare years" would free up money in your day to day budget for expenses like the home remodeling that you have on the docket. I do consider saving for remodels to be a responsible use of funds, especially since it sounds like you guys have a beautiful old home that could really rise in value as you work on it. Just a thought-if anyone else out there sees holes in this idea feel free to let me know.

I know you guys don't finance things, so I won't suggest you finance your H's cars, but I wonder if he would get a better value for his money by purchasing slightly newer used cars that would last closer to 3-4 years. We get a lot of snow here too so I completely understand the toll that takes on a vehicle, but long term that is probably something I would start thinking about it and crunching the numbers on. My goal is to get 250,000 miles out of my little Honda. I have to drive it a lot at work, so even though it's a 2012 it already has 130,000 miles on it.

cbee817 · October 2015

Are you planning on adding to DD's 529 plan or is that it? What if you have a 2nd, 3rd, etc child? Will they get the same amount to start? What's the blow money for? I don't really get that amount- if you go on a vacation, I assume you'll go together (or is that not right?). I can't really imagine spending $9,500 on things without it benefiting the house or the family.. that seems like a ton of money. Can the $30,000 go to home repairs- like the new kitchen, roof, etc? Do you see this as your forever home or are you thinking about moving closer to your jobs (unless you work in opposite directions)? Both of your commutes are a lot with a baby.

I know you don't like debt, but in all honesty, I couldn't imagine dropping $7K on a vehicle with over 100,000 miles on it with the intention of replacing it in 1-2 years. That would make me more uncomfortable than taking out a 48 month loan at 0.9% financing for a new car that I know will last us 8-10 years.

brij2006 · October 2015

The car stuff we're going to have to work with some more.
The way we viewed it, if he drives this car for 2 years and we paid $7k for it. He will put 60k miles on it, and it will probably still be worth around $4k. So we will only need to add another 3-4k to that amount in order to replace his with something newer and with lesser miles.

My H is a big car guy. I wish that I could get him to tone down on the cars. It can become quite the heated issue in our house, to tell you the truth. I personally threw out selling the winter SUV and his toy car in order to give more room in the budget. That did not go over well. His drive to work is long and miserable. I'm not going to lie there. So a vehicle that has some comfort is a big plus, since he spends so much time in it. He also is very big on maintenance and not ignoring issues with vehicles and selling them broken or when they need high dollars of repairs. So if something is close to wearing out or is going to be a bigger issue down the road, it gets repaired.

The winter SUV will only be driven by him when there's a heavy amount of snow on the ground. Other times, it's used to pull the trailer or bring yard waste to the dump.

@cbee817 Our thoughts with the college fund was to let it sit and grow. If/when we have any more kids, we may use some of the money in the mutual fund to pay for their schooling, and we figure that we could probably cash flow any more difference there may be. But we will also be working with our children to have them know they will only being going to an in state, non-private school. Some ritzy school is on their dime.

The blow money is just sitting there. So far H has used $500 to go to the Cubs playoff game, and I used $500 for a Roomba to keep me sane with all the pet hair and the lack of time to vacuum. I may end up using another $1k to buy new chairs and a rug for our dining room table.

We do travel separately often though. My BFF lives in Cali and I try to get there at least once a year. So that's where the money will come from to go.

formerlyGDaisy09 · October 2015

brij2006 said:

-SNIP-

My H is a big car guy. I wish that I could get him to tone down on the cars. It can become quite the heated issue in our house, to tell you the truth. I personally threw out selling the winter SUV and his toy car in order to give more room in the budget. That did not go over well. His drive to work is long and miserable. I'm not going to lie there. So a vehicle that has some comfort is a big plus, since he spends so much time in it. He also is very big on maintenance and not ignoring issues with vehicles and selling them broken or when they need high dollars of repairs. So if something is close to wearing out or is going to be a bigger issue down the road, it gets repaired.

-SNIP-

**Stuck In the BOX**

I'm wondering, if you took him to look at a few newer things, if he might find some added features to be a nice plus when he's spending so much time in the car? something newer, with a smoother ride (but used enough that you might get a good deal on some of the upgrade features..I'm thinking something that might last you guys 6-7 years, not 2, and you can still get $4-5K back on the sale). My dad has a similar commute to your H, and then has to drive for work, he has a company car, but he says things like more comfortable leather seats (seat heaters for winter), sun/moon roof, etc, make his drive more tolerable, and that is worth something when you spend so much of your life in your car.

I'm in LOVE with my subaru outback, it does fantastic in the snow (seriously there are place here where the roads will get closed...unless you have chains or a subaru). I'm currently trying to sell my sister on looking at 2012 or 2013 crosstreks, which is why that one comes to mind, she needs something small (park-able in Boston) that does well in the snow, because she has to drive for work, basically regardless of what the weather is doing...to replace her 2001 ford tarus with 260K miles on it. I told her get thee to a dealer where they *might* give you $1000 for your trade before that car dies somewhere in the middle of an intersection in Boston (probably during rush-hour)!

brij2006 · October 2015

@formerlyGDaisy09 He's more into the horsepower type stuff, plus options. :-( I had to talk him off the ledge when he wanted an older BMW. No way could we afford to repair that darn thing.

Thankfully he really really likes this current car. If it still runs as well as it does now, I could see him keeping it for well over 2 years.

jtmh2012 · October 2015

I won't beat too much more on this, but when I got my Impala, we sold a 20 yr old Corsica. It spent part of its life in Maine, so it faced some rough winters. A car will last that long with proper maintenance, but that's not popular in today's consumer culture. However, we bought the car new and it had well over 300,000 miles on it by the time I sold it.

Budget thoughts needed

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