Hi, I broke. Fix me. - Love, Your Car

Our nine-year-old Saturn surprised us last night, first by losing power to the A/C and radio, then by refusing to restart after we'd shut it off. We had to call in a tow truck this morning and have the car carted over to the dealership for repairs. It turns out the area where you insert the key (clearly, I have no knowledge of correct automotive terms) was all jumbled up and needed to be rebuilt.

The damage: $583, plus towing fees. Our insurance company will reimburse us for the towing. Good times. Why spend money on a summer vacation when you can shovel it all into your aging sedan? :-D

As we usually do for large expenses, we charged it to our point-earning credit card and will pay it off as soon as it shows up in our online statement. We may need to dip into the emergency fund, but hey, that's partly why it's there. At times like this, I'm reminded what a relief it is to have even just a little cash socked away into savings. Rebuilding the account is a lot less painful than paying interest to the interest-loving credit card companies.