Six years ago, I needed a newer car. My old reliable wasn't so reliable anymore (indeed, soon after making the last payment on the loan I took out to purchase it, the old reliable became a combustible collection of auto parts that, once I'd sold it off in exchange for my new car, promptly died on me). I needed a loan to get this newer car, the car I currently have now. The people at the bank were more than happy to help me set it up, assuring me that in my current employed position (two jobs at the time), I could handle the $289.89 a month (I never figured out why no one ever just rounded it up to 290 even, but hey, what did I know about international banking and finance). Yep, no worries on the making-payments-on-time front.
If you can tell where this is going, kudos: In the interim between then and now, I've gone through a few more jobs, a few months of financial sub-existence (barely getting by on some occasions were it not for family and friends generously excusing my inability to cover my half of any dinner bill or whatnot), and some epic highs around tax return time (followed by epic lows when my car or other things made demands on money that had come back to me from the government). I've been dirt poor and filthy rich (well, not rich, but able to afford more than a pizza slice for lunch, perhaps). I've literally gotten gray hairs over this (well, actually the gray hairs started cropping up when I turned twenty, but still. Gray hairs). And this week, it all came to an end...assuming my calculations are correct.
In the mail this Wednesday, I received a letter from my bank (they're so big, they're all over America. You could call them "Bank of...the United States," perhaps) informing me that what I owed left on my car loan was merely $207 dollars and something sense (again, why not round up?). This letter was post-dated prior to last Friday, when I'd contributed a hundred to the "Please Don't Think I Don't Want to Pay More and On Time, I Just Can't" Fund at the bank. So by my keen reasoning and eager grasp of the financial ways and means of the world, plus counting on my fingers, I deduced that what I owed was around 108 all told. You see how I rounded up?
Yesterday, putting in an extra two dollars for good measure, I paid off my car loan. Or at least the loan; no telling what the interest will be, but still. For all intents and purposes, my car is mine. I can do with it as I please. Hookers and blow will now divert all my funds, of course.
In all seriousness, the exhaustion of this particular stress level on my life is a blessing, be it from God, Allah, Buddha, or Tom Cruise. I have struggled mightily with the payments in the last three years, years that saw me lose the job I loved doing the most because of my own incompetence and propensity to blog about work stuff online (see, now I only do personal stuff. No down side there). There have been times when I was happy for a measly little check because it meant that most of it, but not all, could keep the proverbial Bank Police from coming to my house and taking my car because of late or no payment (then I realized, thanks to a conversation with a loan officer who didn't realize what he'd done, that as long as I made some kind of payment during the month, be it one hundred dollars or one, that the bank really couldn't do more than call me a lot and harass me. Thus the era of staggered payments began). It has been an albatross around my neck, or a weight that while not dead certainly isn't contributing to my overall progress through this bizarre love triangle called life.
Now I can start thinking about grad school, about writing more often (amazing how blocked you can be when you're more worried about money than "Money (That's What I Want)" as covered by the Beatles or "Money" by Pink Floyd). I can look forward to the start of student loan payments should grad school take a while (mercifully only two hundred a month, which I hope and pray I can manage until such time as I can get a seat at the table). Now I can listen to carefree songs about not having a care in the world and know that, while they're bullshit (there will *always* be something or someone to worry you and cause you some grief), sometimes they work out for the best. Now I can embrace my inner hippie (though I despise the notion of hippie-dom for its abandonment of society, as well as the lack of bathing) and enjoy the Grateful Dead, albeit in "greatest hits" album form (not for me the prolonged jams and live recordings that you really do have to be stoned for to enjoy, at least in my opinion). "A Touch of Grey" was the Dead's sole solitary charting hit song, if I remember my pop-music history correctly, and it got to be that way because it was the Eighties and anyone could have a hit song at this point (don't believe me? Two words: Don Johnson. Two other words: Eddie Murphy). But it's a nice, laid-back tune, perfect for driving from the bank after making (what I hope is) my last car payment, on a car that took me to New Orleans and back, a car that I carried my niece around in that time my sister had to go to Six Mile to meet her grandfather on her dad's side for some family business before he postponed and made us feel like we'd rode all that way for naught, and a car that has taken me to look for jobs and to go to jobs that I have enjoyed or hated to varying degrees. It is a part of who I am, this car, and while I don't have a Christine-level obsession with (nor a propensity to fuck it, as in a memorable SNL commercial parody from the past), I do love what it's done for me. And now, barring a miscalculation, it is mine. Now the fun part: shit is going to break down on it, for sure.
But hey, that's when I get a new car, am I right? ;-)
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