Cold Weather and Cars

Cold Weather and Cars
Our January weather came back a few days ago, and got colder each day. Yesterday morning it was minus 10 below with 25 below zero wind chill. The prediction was for it to get colder and have a very cold weekend. There is a wind chill advisory through Sunday. This morning it was -18 below zero and the wind chill was -40 below.

Cold weather is especially hard for those in poverty. Transportation is one issue,just to name one issue of many. I think today, of those that can't afford newer cars. Three cars in our household, two of them have done well all week. Rob, on the other hand, has an old car and his car needed a jump the last two days. And his luck, he works this weekend. He is lucky that he still lives at home, or he'd have to really figure how to manuver the bus schedule, which isn't real great from here to his work. Yesterday and today we gave him Bob's car, and Bob is nursing Rob's old one. This is not the time of the year that you want to have an old car. They just don't cooperate with the sub zero degrees.

Bob and I are so thankful to have two good cars. We remember the days when we only had one car and it was always an old one. It's nice to finally be able to afford at least one newer car (our second one is a '98, but it's a Toyota). We remember the winters where we struggled all the time with keeping the car running. Even when we got to where we could afford two cars, they were always two old ones. When the cold comes, if anything is close to breaking down in your old car, it will break down when the cold weather hits. Two old cars and winter, we always seemed to be dealing with keeping them running and car repair costs. To make matters worse, back in those days, when our car broke down, it was always between paydays when we didn't have money or credit cards. Oh, so glad those days are behind us. At least these days we have credit cards! We can also afford an AAA membership.