So! Let's talk about dry rot.
Almost a year since your last blog post, and this is what you're talking about?
The short version is that I took my car in for an oil change. Probably a little overdue considering how far I drove - Oh, I'm living in Georgia now. Also, I'm attending the University of Georgia for my Ph.D. now.
I should probably talk about this a bit. Later, though.
Anyway, back to the story at hand. As part of my oil change, the Tires Plus I took my car to just north of Athens heading towards Hull performed a free tire rotation. During their inspection of the tires, I got called out to the bay where they had my car up on a lift, and asked me to look at something.
Basically, this. This isn't my tire, I didn't think to take pictures at the time.
Three of my tires had dry rot. Basically, dry rot occurs when the rubber in your tires are kept still for extended periods of time in bright, hot, sunny environments (such as how my car sat on a Oklahoma car lot for a year and a half waiting to be sold.) The only tire that lacked dry rot was the one I replaced in January when I had taken a nail.
Basically, my car was now a death trap, at risk of the belts on three tires separating at any time, without warning, and ensuring that particular trip to Kroger (or Chesapeake in December) would have likely been my last.
Needless to say, a $75 oil change quickly became $400+ to replace three tires. The other option would have been to have a car I would have been fearful to drive until I had the money to replace three tires, at likely a higher price, as the matching tire for the good one happened to be on sale.
Luckily for me, I had gotten my first credit card in almost 15 years the week prior.
I hadn't told anyone I had it yet, because those kinds of things tend to lead to talks that make me uncomfortable and agitated. My last bout with a credit card, a Capital One card, ended poorly. I was young, and stupid, and basically charged it up as high as it could go with video game purchases. Considering my usual safety net in financial emergencies was my dad's wallet, and let's face it, I'm too old for that, I decided to take up a credit offer I got from Alaska Air as an emergency safety net; a bit of financial flexibility for when emergencies crop up that wouldn't really care about how much cash I had in my bank account at any given time.
The hardest part is resisting the urge to become Santa Claus for my nieces.
Honestly, I wish I didn't need it. I had gone 15 years without a credit card, but I decided that if I'm going to live on my own out here, I needed a degree of financial flexibility, tempered by hard learned lessons gleaned from my adult life, and mistakes of the past. But, as I handed over my card, I came to a realization.
Credit in this modern world is a sort of necessary evil.
It's not ideal, but thanks to credit, I can now drive secure in the knowledge that if I die behind the wheel, it probably won't be because my tires did a 70 MPH strip tease, and I can spread the payments out in a way that makes it manageable for me and my income.
Now, I'm not saying you should run off and sign up for every card you get an offer for. I took the Alaska card because I like Alaska and want to bank miles, I wanted something for small purchases I could use to boost my credit score with positive payment histories and, as I said, have that emergency net. Just keep in mind that if credit cards are the devil, it helps to be able to dance with the devil on occasion.
As the song says, after all, the Devil went down to Georgia.