On the budget: There's a ton of stuff we lost. Too much to list here. The genny, tools, clothes, food, some of the means that we were going to use to support ourselves as we worked on the road, water filters, our hitch and on and on.
Heck, we lost $1500 worth of dry food alone. I have *hundreds* of food allergies. Finding months worth of light weight, easily stored food that won't kill me so we could eat when we were 100 miles from civilization was not cheap. I can't even drink city water; chlorine and fluoride will put me in the ER. I have to have special and not cheap filer systems or blow a wad on bottle watered constantly. And there's a lot of bottle watered I can't drink b/c it has **** in it.
We did not just lose our truck and trailer. We lost almost everything. There is so much stuff we have to replace it boggles the mind. All my tools are gone. Heck, the lug wrench got bent. We don't have to just replace a truck and trailer. We have to completely rebuild our lives.
Neither one of us is retired or drawing any guberment support or pensions. We have to completely and totally make our own way in the world. I have several disabilities and medical conditions that in total make it hard for me to find work. But none of it is enough to qualify me for benefits.
We went on the road b/c we got kicked out of a *non-smoking apartment*. We got kicked out b/c the disabled lady smoker who lived below us (who gets a guberment check *like lots of folks there*) was making me sick.
Read that again.
I can't blow our whole wad on equipment or replacing the many, many thousands of dollars worth of things that were lost. I have to leave us an operating budget so we can live until we find the next work camp gig, or sell some of her hand made costume jewelry that was not lost, or find a temp job or make it until next October when we can go down to Houston and make 2/3 of our annual budget pulling holiday orders for Amazon.
On the vehicle: It's not any harder or more expensive to fix than other ******** modern vehicle that has an air bag rear leveling system, a bunch of computerized **** that does not belong in the internal combustion engine and a mutated octopus sitting on top of it. It will do the job I want and has the stuff I want.
I basically paid 5k for it and did 5k maint that should keep it on the road for another 150K miles.
That's getting ripped off? A 10-15k truck still would have needed 3k+ in maint and repairs.
I'm going to be able to replace nearly everything that was lost, actually get some upgrades in the process, leave us a living budget, be able to support us for the next two months while I heal and hit the road in late January with one years prepaid insurance on everything, the ability to dry camp just about anywhere I please, $7k+ cash in hand and the ability to support us.
That's a bad way to go?
Y'all think I screwed up?
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Edit:
BTW folks, I did not jump in to the first car I found. I screened more than 500 on line and more than 60 in person. 99.98% were complete trash.
The others were worth 3k and need 7k work and they wanted 7k. Or they were worth 12k, they wanted 15k and they needed 1.5k work.
I found an almost identical vehicle to what I bought over at carmax.
***It was 12k and need 3k work***!!! (Plugs, tranny serv, fluids, flushes, yadda, yadda.)
And I did bad?
I wasn't looking to be scolded. I was looking for practical advice, like known engine issues, weight issues, a detail I over looked, comments on solar upgrades, you know; helpful stuff.
