Decisions. Decisions.

Our van died. Cracked engine block. It is ten years old. We just spent $600 to find out that it will cost $2000, more or less, to fix it.

So do we fix it, or replace it? Our budget is very tight and most of the vehicles in our price range are probably in about the same condition as our van. You know, on the edge of major repairs.

If we fix it, there is the danger that the transmission could go out in the next couple years. They tend to do that around 200K miles. We are within 40K of that.

Also, our van is titled in New York State. We are rounding up all the documents we need to prove who we are so we can get the clean title. Of course, the van broke down right after we paid it off. Because we have to request it by mail, it will take 6-8 weeks to obtain the title.

Expanding our price range for newer vehicle may get us better quality, but it also puts us back into debt for a vehicle.

Right now we are borrowing our brother-in-law's car. It fits us, barely.

So, what to do?

Decisions

I have been feeling quite strongly that I should do this. I have decided to create a pamphlet or a book about the decisions people have to make when faced with the death of a child. Some of them are different from those faced by the death of an older loved one. Even if it never gets published beyond running it off my printer, I think it is still a good project for me to do right now.