New Car and Pay Raises

New Car

A lot of interesting things happened in the last couple of weeks. First, I have returned to my old job at Scotts Miracle Gro as a merchandiser/product consultant. Because of this, I had to take a serious look at my old car. My old 1999 Subaru was the first car that I really owned for myself. I paid for lots of repairs in that car and it was even registered in my name.

Now, it had over 210,000 miles on it, had broken cruise control, tires that would not stay full, a check engine light on, steering that seemed questionable, and I am sure a number of other things that were wrong with it. It was a nice car, and served its purpose well. However, now that I am going back to work I am driving a lot more and a lot farther. Having a reliable car became more and more necessary.

Fortunately, we were able to save up a nice bit of money before now. It does seem a bit ironic that I had to get a new car in order to go to work and now I have to go to work in order to pay for the car. That said, we were able to put a nice down-payment on the car, get a decent interest rate, and a low monthly payment for the nearly new car.

The car is a Chevy Sonic 2014. It had less than 2000 miles on it when I bought it. So yea, it is basically a new car and it is really fun to drive. It was a blessing to find a great car at a price we could afford and have money in the bank to put down on it. The main picture is what it looks like if you have not gotten a chance to see a picture yet.

More Blessings

Obviously there is even more to this story based on the title. Not only were we able to get a car that I believe we could afford regardless, both Melissa and myself were given raises in the last couple of weeks. They are not huge raises by any means, but between the two of them it is actually more than the car payment itself. What an unexpected blessing! After all, anything helps when you are trying to pay back student loans and get ahead.

Melissa is also now able to focus more on the job that she wanted to as her promotion has moved in to full effect. I am hoping that I too will be receiving a “promotion” of sorts as the guy who used to work longer in the year than me has been promoted and moved to another area. This could mean that my job would be more year round which would be nice as it would mean that I had a job come next fall. Although, it would still be more ideal for me to find a job that I enjoyed a little bit more, at this point it is nice to have something that will pay the bills.

The next big step for us is figuring out where we are going to live in the coming months. We really want to move to a place that will allow us to have a dog. We feel that this is a next big step in our lives and we are not getting any younger. If we have to sign another lease where we live now, we stay for another year. This is not all that bad as we do like the place that we are living now. However, not being able to get a dog for another year seems like a rock in our path. Ultimately everything will work out, but these are some of our wishes, desires, and blessings so far for 2015.

 

-Pastor Zach