Yes, I drive a 22 year old car. No, I'm not buying a new one.

Anytime someone hears how old my car is, they get uncomfortable. Like, “How can you drive that? Is it safe? Is it reliable?” And the list goes on. I get it. I drive a 2001 Toyota Sequoia with over 200k miles on it. And to a lot of folks, that’s scary. But I’ve spent the last three weeks without my trusty rusty. She’s been in the shop getting some major work done. And that’s allowed me time to really think about what it means to hold on to and drive the same car for nearly a decade.

Just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s about to die.

First, let’s get this out of the way, shall we? Just because a car is old doesn’t mean it’s about to die. In the United States, we believe that if a car is old or has a lot of miles on it, it needs to be replaced. That’s not necessarily true. You can have an old car or a car with many miles, which cranks on the first lick.

My husband’s old truck, that we had for 13 years had nearly 400,000 miles on it (no, that’s not a typo). We drove up to Helen, GA, to get married in the truck. It’s the truck that my husband started two businesses with. And even though that truck had a LOT of miles on it, it fired up without trouble, and we never had a fear of being left stranded in it.

It’s the same with my car – I’ve had it for nine years, and it was manufactured before I could even drive. But she fires right up, and I do not fear being stranded. So all this to say that just because a car is old or has a lot of miles on it – don’t let that trick you into believing that there’s something wrong with the car. Is it true that there can be things wrong with cars regardless of age or miles? Yes. But age and miles don’t necessarily mean the car must be replaced.

Why am I still driving around in my old car?

Here’s the thing. I’d LOVE to have a newer Suburban or Yukon XL. I covet the trunk space of those vehicles. But the reality is that we’d either have to take all the money we have saved to afford one, or we’d have to take a car loan to do so. And honestly, neither option is that appealing to us right now. In a few years, when our oldest starts learning how to drive, it very well may be time to get me a different car and allow the Sequoia to be the car my three kids learn to drive on. But right now, that does not make financial sense.

Driving my old car affords my family the luxury of me still being able to stay home with them and homeschool our kids. Could we still afford to keep me home if we had a huge car payment? Possibly but we enjoy the freedom that comes without that burden on our home.

How to afford to repair a car no matter the age or miles.

When it comes to taking care of our cars, they will only last if we maintain them. Period. It doesn’t matter if you buy a brand-new car – that car will not continue to serve you well if you fail to maintain it. So how do to make affording car repairs? For us, that looks like having a car maintenance Sinking Fund where we put money into a separate bank account to help pay for regular maintenance and even some small repairs. Another major or sudden repair that happens? That gets paid by the Emergency Fund.

We put a little money from each paycheck into the Auto Maintenance Sinking Fund until we reached our “threshold” amount. We came up with $2,000 being the threshold as we want this account to both cover the cost of our insurance deductible as well as being able to put four new tires on our vehicles. Once we’ve reached that threshold, we stop contributing to that account. We’ll restart contributions if we have to use the account to bring it back up to the threshold limit.

Changing our mindsets.

Here’s the deal. We’ve got to change our mindset around driving cars here in the U.S. We’ve been sold this idea that once a car is a certain age or has a certain amount of miles on it, it’s time to replace it. There’s also this idea that a repair over $1,000 is too much, and we should get a new car. But here’s the thing – it’s usually cheaper to pay for the repair of a car, even if it’s over $1,000 than to sink ourselves into debt for a new one.

Don’t get me wrong – I’ve had a car constantly in the shop. I was spending a ton of money on that car all the time, leaving me stranded several times. So I understand that there are cars that are just unreliable no matter what you do. However, I firmly believe those are the exceptions and not the rule. All cars will eventually need maintenance and repairs. We should be prepared for those as best we can. I believe this will keep more cars out of landfills and will keep us more financially stable.