Car Troubles

Well, we spent  a long weekend with my family and it was great, but on our way out of town our car started making a growling noise and had a terrible burning smell.
Since we have a one year old we didn't want to take the chance our car would break down in the middle of nowhere in 107 degree weather so we pulled off into a gas station a called, you guessed it, good ole Dad.  He brought us his car to drive home and took ours to fix it himself.  Yeah, I have a great Dad.

Well, the good news is that the burning smell was the something or other belt rubbing against a plastic thingy that wasn't supposed to be loose (can you tell I know a lot about cars?), the bad news is that the plastic thingy that wasn't supposed to be loose came off of a motor mount that we have to get fixed.  I haven't taken the car in yet but from what I've read it is going to cost about $600!

Thank goodness for the car maintenance fund.  If we didn't have the money saved for the unexpected stuff like this we would have been in trouble.  Every time I start thinking things like:  "we should stop saving money every month to put into the car, home, medical... fund" something goes wrong and we need that money.  Sure, we could use that "extra" money each month for vacations, clothes, or more dinners out, and secretly, I would love to do that, but being a mature responsible adult I know we are doing the right thing.  Blah...