By Jeremy D. Wells
Carter County Times
Sometimes it seems like being an adult is just jumping from one unanticipated expense to another. It’s like the least fun game of whack-a-mole ever – but instead of hitting rodents with a rubber mallet, you pay off one debt just in time for something else to pop up and let you know it needs replacing.
The most recent one for me was my car. I hadn’t really had this last vehicle long. I’d gotten a great deal on it, just a couple years old and with a few miles as a fleet vehicle, but nothing outrageous. But in the time I had it, I pushed it well over the 100,000 mile mark. I also hit someone’s dog with it early in the pandemic. The dog, thankfully, was fine. But my car was not. It had some damage to the radiator, and some out-of-sight damage to the front bumper. This occurred when supply chain bottlenecks made it impossible to get parts in a timely manner, and it was out of commission for several months while we waited for the parts we needed to arrive. We eventually got it repaired, but it was never quite the same after that. As the miles racked up, along with my concerns about the cooling system, I decided it was time to bite the bullet and replace it.
That meant finally breaking down and cleaning it out too.
One of the things I noticed, as I dug old napkins and chip bags out of the back floorboard and pulled notebooks and CDs out of my console, was the amount of loose change that had accumulated in the car.
I filled the bottom of a sandwich bag with a collection of mostly pennies, but a good amount of silver too, from the cubby under my dashboard. I found even more in the middle console, hidden underneath the stack of CDs I kept in there. It isn’t a lot, maybe a few bucks worth (especially if I bothered to count and roll all the pennies) and I’ll probably just dump it all in the kids’ piggy banks.
Here’s the thing though, there was a time – not too long ago in fact – when I wouldn’t have had change accumulate in my car like that. It wouldn’t have accumulated because I would have needed to use it. I’d have needed to use the quarters for the laundromat. The pennies, dimes, and nickels to keep from breaking a larger bill, so I could try to hold onto it longer.
There was a time when I would have had to spend every penny I earned, just to get by. There was a time when I wouldn’t have had the luxury of tossing it into my console, to fall underneath my music and be forgotten about.
So, while I might complain about going into debt again right after paying my last vehicle off, I’m honestly in a blessed place.
I’m not a rich man; not by a long shot. But I’ve got the blessing of dirty spare change, accumulating in my cupholder. I’m doing well enough that I don’t have to count and roll every penny I find, just to buy gas to get to work.
I’ve finally got the blessing of spare change; and I wish the same for all the rest of you too.
Contact the writer at editor@cartercountytimes.com
