One year of one car life

We're about one year into living with just one car. Our Nissan Sentra bit the dust after it was totaled about a year ago. At that time, I thought it would be only a temporary situation, but we ended up having to take that insurance payment and rolling it into the down payment for our house.

So here we are. As a result, I work from home about 95 percent of the time. We can't always do the things we'd like to because we can't be two places at once. We've gotten by with occasional lending of vehicles by friends and relatives, but don't have the money to afford either the down payment or any kind of monthly payment.

Meanwhile, we keep looking at vehicles that can seat more than five -- not that we are going to have more children, but so our growing three can spread out a little bit. Or if we want to, say, go buy a snowblower, we can transport one. Or when we have guests in from out of town, all of us can go somewhere in one vehicle.

Cate and I have had two cars for a while, but it was deceiving. We've never had two car payments at once -- the second car was almost always one bought or gifted from a relative. I was sure we'd be able to save money in our new house but income is flat and my health insurance went from bad to awful last winter.

Reminds me, I should really be writing my freelance pieces for USA Today rather than writing on the blog. Whoops.