Buying My Own Car (Finally)
Some women mark milestones with flowers or jewelry. Me? I will be marking mine with a new (to me) car. Not because I wanted to. Because life forced me to.
Let me take you back a few months: I was driving my faithful-but-fragile 2003 Mercedes. She was old, tired, and frankly one pothole away from retirement. Sure enough, the axle broke before I even got the chance to replace the ball joints and wheel bearings I had just bought. Honesty Hallmark couldn’t write the corny lines in my life sometimes.
To say I had vehicle issues would be an understatement. At this point, I have technically eight vehicles in various states of decay. Three of them? Headed to the scrapyard. Two? Selling for parts. One that has engine fault lights but is driveable – for now lol. One that has an oil leak and a broken axle – and the last one? Well, that one’s still registered to me with an auto loan in my name… and sitting in my ex’s driveway. He doesn’t need it. Just refuses to return it. And because we’re still legally married, he’s entitled to half its value. He cannot sell it but neither can the police get it back for me. So he keeps it, and I keep paying to make sure my credit is intact. Control and abuse at its finest.
Cue the CAA breakdown. A lovely tire blowout left me stranded 7km from home, in the dark, on a road with no cell service. Picture it: me, with 2 kids, waiting, with only the sound of nature and my growing resentment for old cars, 2 million black flies and mosquitos and a spare that had a faulty valve – just because sometimes it feels that life really needs to laugh at you. After that night, I wisely invested in a CAA membership. Survival instinct: activated.
Fast forward to now. I’ve test-driven a few vehicles and have my eye on three solid contenders. I have a plan. The scrap cars are getting sold. The money from that will go toward repairing the broken-axle Mercedes. Why? Because I live 7km from the nearest highway and 15 minutes from the smallest of small towns. Rural living is beautiful, peaceful… and totally unforgiving when your only vehicle doesn’t start. Having a backup is not a luxury – it’s survival.
I’m currently driving one of the half-working ones, but it’s not winter-worthy, and the trade-in value? Insulting. It has 2 seats and I have 4 kids – even my maths can figure out this will not work. So the plan is this: use funds from scrapped cars so I repair the axle on the old Mercedes, I’ll privately sell the one I’m running around in now. Hopefully fast enough to use that money as a down payment on a newer, more reliable car — lowering my loan repayments in the process.
But the drama didn’t end there.
I had the car. But no ownership papers. And without that? No insurance. No insurance meant no plate renewal. So I did what anyone stuck in a bureaucratic chokehold does- (There needs to be something Service Ontario can do like the equivalent of a temporary sticker for plate but for ownership papers….) find a friend who can drive you there -I paid $12 for a new ownership, sat in the front seat, took a photo of it along photos of the car, and emailed it to the insurance company. They sent me a pink slip by email a few minutes later, and I marched back into the Service Ontario office and finally got my plates renewed.
It was a whole thing.
And because life loves to test you, I’ve still got three more payments to make on that truck my ex refuses to return. I’ll finish those payments — not for him, but for my credit score, which has already been through enough. Then, just to be safe, I’m pulling my personal credit report. Because who knows what other “surprises” might be waiting for me, courtesy of my ex’s financial sabotage. Trust me, if there’s a dark corner in a legal loophole, he’s probably hiding in it.
But here’s the good news.
For the first time in a long time, I have a plan. I’m driving again (for now) – legally, even! Although not sure how with a 2 seater I will get us all camping in a few weeks….. I’m building credit back up, taking ownership (literally and figuratively), and doing it all without anyone telling me I can’t. So I test drove some cars today, I did a thing and hopefully in a few weeks I will have a new to me car.
But this isn’t just about buying a car. It is about reclaiming the driver’s seat in my own damn life.
So I have a plan and soon I will have a new life and a hopefully a new car.
One replacement axle, one pink slip and one smile at a time.
I got this!
