My wife recently was driving to work, and her car shut off on the highway.
It almost caused an accident and in the moment she “thought for sure it was going to be over”.
I picked her up from work that night and she completely had a breakdown about how she thought she was going to never see me again. I feel awful for her.
To add on to this:
- This has happened to her before with her previous car (That we sold to get her current car, it was of a similar age)
- She has a conversation with me 3 weeks ago about how she wanted a new car because she doesn’t think her car was safe (although, we have had this conversation before). There was nothing wrong with the car that triggered this, but it’s getting close to a cold season here. I told her we need to hold out, and should get new tires for the moment.
We have older cars (2009 & 2010, both under 150km), but we keep up on maintenance & inspections and they work well with expected repairs at that age.
Now, my wife doesn’t want to drive her car anymore, or my car (because it’s just as old) because she no longer feels safe driving them. Also with this being the second time this has happened, she wants to get something new, or at least fairly new, in the next two weeks.
I told her I want her to get a new car, but we need to hold out a few more months to save up some cash. Our money is tight, we’re planning on buying a house next year so we need to keep saving for a down payment (we only have a total of 10k saved up, although we have no debt, this is really just an emergency fund) and the market is really, really bad for cars right now.
She broke down again about how about saving a little money isn’t worth dying over, and while I really, really do understand her, making our largest purchase *ever* in two weeks because of a scary experience sounds like we might be making an impulsive decision.
To meet her in the middle we rented a car from a rental shop for now so should could take some time to driving something “newer” because I feel like I couldn’t push her to drive my old car after her dealing with all of this, but after a week she will either need to start driving her car again (understandable that she doesn’t want to drive this), or my car (which I think she should, as my car has had no issues and low miles).
Am I being an insensitive here? I really don’t want my wife to feel unsafe driving, and she really does deserve a new car, but we just don’t have the money and I can help but feel this is something we will regret rushing into when I don’t feel confident out our current financial situation.
Added context:
The car is at the shop, we do not know yet what happened. I am 100% sure this was not my wife fault, she is a great driver. When her last car broke down, I drove for 6 months. It broke down on me multiple times. It was just a used, cheap car that was not reliable. With the last car, the belt snapped on the highway. It did get it’s normal inspections and maintenance. I don’t know how this was missed.
I do not think, or have suggested her to, that she should continue driving her car.
However, we do have two cars, one that I don’t drive because I work from home. My suggestion is that she drive that for just a couple months. It’s passed all inspections and has never had a problem, but it’s a similar age as her previous one. For that reason she does not want to drive it.