Thursday, September 22, 2016

How old is too old for a car

My beloved Volkswagen Passat just completed her 14.5 years of life with me and has been a great and very reliable car to drive around. Now with 140K+ miles on the car there is always the thought that lurks in my brain, how many more days with the same old car? the question became even more relevant couple of months ago when the mechanic told me that the solution to fix a check engine light would cost $1000 to fix (it ended up being ~$1600) to fix. Can I not keep the money and dump the VW and buy a different one? my mind said may be but my heart said vehemently no. 

My problem was 2 fold, I need to spend the money to fix the check engine light on the car or else whoever willing to buy the car would negotiate the price of the car as though it would be sold for parts. Secondly, since I am already paying for a car loan I didn’t want to add one more car payment (if I can avoid it). I guess this is the first time in the 14 years I have owned the car I did a compilation of how much I have spent over the years (last 5-6) in maintaining/up keeping the car, turned out in the last 6 years on an average I have spent $1,200/year on maintenance including brakes, tires and battery. So, technically the costs were in favor of keeping the car.   

I pretty much discussed with every one I can think of about the car (to fix it or not to) and I think the best answer came from a colleague of mine. Its not the money spent alone but also the time the car needs to spend in the mechanic shop and the inconvenience it would cause and how much of it can you bear and endure, there are advantages of keeping the old car for you don’t have to worry about car payments and if the car is sufficiently old enough you can save on the insurance too and in the end if you can find a good mechanic you can trust and bear with the car’s absence for a few days in a year then longer you keep the better off you are financially.

After going through 3 different mechanics in last 7 or so years, I think I have found a good mechanic in Brink Motorsports and true to their ratings on all websites (Google, Yelp etc), I recommend them in a heart beat for VW/Audi repairs.

Yes I did make my car street legal and have to decided to run it for another 2 to 3 years or longer if possible :).    

Friday, September 16, 2016

The industry of pet food

While talking to a friend of mine, the conversation steered towards "when so many people are dying of hunger, shouldn't the world address that first.before addressing pet food needs and organizing fund raisers for pet foods". 

Fair question, at that time I put it off saying each person has his/her own passion that they are free to pursue, some like to drive human cause while others like to drive animal causes. After a few minutes a thought occurred to me that most of the pet food sold in the pet stores are made from meat/part of the animals that are considered not fit enough for human consumption.  To my knowledge there is only 1 company called honest kitchen which has been approved by FDA that the meat used is human grade in their pet food. 

To elaborate, the meat industry in the USA and I am guessing other developed countries is so huge huge and organized and have found an answer to the question of what to do with all the left over's after taking out the meat fit for human consumption?, Convert to pet food, after raising Daisy for a year and half I am convinced that not a single part of any animal used in human food will ever go wasted, everything from bones to hide to cartilage and intestines are used in some form of other as pet food. 

I am not here trying to take a stance and saying right or wrong but this connection boggled my mind. If I stress myself further the same is true for vegetarian food cycle too, the husk the grass is all used to feed the animals, I guess I didn’t notice it back in India for it was never that organized and not commercialized like the pet food industry we have here in the USA.