Cash it, Stash it, or Trash it

Happy New Year!!

I woke up this morning all ready to go. After sitting around doing practically nothing for the last 4 weeks I actually felt like today was the day to get something done. At 8:00 I was outside in the cool morning air (15 degrees f ) loading up my van with items that were going into a local auction. I actually had a full day scheduled. First, a trip to the auction to drop off the freshly loaded items. Then a trip to one of the local charities to drop off some usable household items. Finally a trip to the scrapyard to sell a grouping of metal items that would otherwise be worthless. How little I knew.

The Van.

Ford Windstar, 1997, runs great, oops! I purchased van 2 years ago for $800.00. It was old, a bit scraggly and with 114,000 miles getting a little long in the tooth for a Windstar. But it did fill my needs. This business can be pretty hard on automobiles. Many miles of driving, the loading of heavy items on the inside and of course extensive use of the roof rack on the outside for larger items. It was used for towing trailers. It made several trips to North Carolina, numerous flea markets / antiques shows and made many trips to antiques appraising shows. Scratches, dents and heavy hauling are all part of the daily routine for a van used in this business. It served me well. Until this morning.

To put it as simple as possible, THE ENGINE BLEW. As I was making my trek towards the auction the van simply slowed down and started coasting. I was on a major four lane highway and managed to coast into a parking lot. Ironically the parking lot was for a HOSPICE care home (no I'm not making this up). In the HOSPICE parking lot she was pronounced dead.

Towed home on a flatbed, she now awaits her final fate, being crushed to be used again. Hopefully she will be reincarnated as a Lexus or maybe a girder in a tall building, most likely though, she will be sent to China, be changed into a toaster and be sent back to the U.S. market. I really believe in reusing every single item with the ultimate goal of protecting the environment as much as possible. I just not sure about how it can be scrapped in the U.S., shipped halfway around the world, be remanufactured, get shipped back to the U.S. and then be sold as a toaster for $7.99.

This however is not a tale of woe. I am actually pleased with my purchase of the van. Why? Because I purchased the car for $800.00, drove it for 2 years and now I will scrap it for around $500.00. Not bad. How many of people can say that you drove a car for 2 years and only had $300.00 in depreciation occur? I know that not everyone is cut out to drive a $800 car. In fact for most people I would not recommend it, but, there is a lesson to be learned here and that is you can get great buys on just about anything, cars included. So my van has now made it to a new category TRASH IT FOR CASH! Scrapyard here we come.