We budgeted for emergencies—we just didn’t plan for this size of unexpected expense this early. We have had repeated days the truck had no power—in fact going over Monarch Pass it overheated to the point of needing to pull off to the side of the road and we were not sure we were going over the pass.
George and Tom Burke (friend from Denver) decided that it was probably injectors going out (which would be a sizable repair). Over the last 6 months we have researched and "shopped" for trucks. We were holding out the hope that we might not need to get a different truck. We have looked at trucks while we were in Indiana, Kansas City and then Colorado.
We really thought we were going to get an HDT; a converted Semi-truck set up to pull a 5thwheel. After exhaustive of research we realized it isn’t realistic for me (Lisa) to get into a semi regularly.
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We will easily be able to tow our 5th wheel and then tow the jeep behind the 5th wheel.
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We bought the truck from Medved, which is the same dealer we bought our F350 from--11 years ago. Our trade-in on the truck was only $16K less than what we paid for the truck 10 years earlier. We feel excited that we avoided a real crisis by getting a different truck before the old one died. We love the new truck and we are going to move forward in the excitement of that.
It is hard to plan for unexpected expenses in a "normal" life. But now that neither of us is working, an unexpected expense can quickly turn into a crisis. It is funny that I use the term "normal" life. What in the world constitutes a normal life. I guess the world tells us that normal is we have a sticks 'n bricks house and 2 jobs with no expectations of ever not working.
We have done the research, we have prayed about the decision and then we have moved forward with the purchase--hoping and believing it is the right move.
