$200 Mistake

I was on my way to an appointment downtown. It was near rush hour and there is a lot of construction around Houston right now (and by now I mean always). The two main routes from the south, I-45 and 288, are a mess where they cross 610. So when Google informed me of a surface street route that was faster I reluctantly took it instead of sticking to the highways like I normally would.

The streets I end up on are in less than ideal condition and I’m stuck behind this lumbering pickup hauling something and going 10+mph below the speed limit. When the street widens to two lanes, I gratefully get over into the new lane. Light turns green, I accelerate, the road curves and then guess what, the lane I’m in no longer exists. No warning sign. I can’t get over because that truck is too close, so I slam into some hole at the now edge of the road.

I end up tearing a gash in my tire. Far larger than any patch kit can repair. And fancy new cars don’t come with spare tires these days. This requires a tow truck. For a flat tire. Sigh.

Fortunately, part of the purchase of the car included roadside assistance for a few years. So I call up Honda, they tow me all the way from downtown to the dealership near home and I’m only out for the new tire.

We’re well off enough that almost $200 will not ruin us. We’ll think twice about going out to eat a few times and FFG already helped me out by delaying the next wave of X-wing by a month. There are better ways we could have made use of that money but we‘re not going to suffer. My wife could even come pick my son and I up because her work has flexible hours. The whole incident was an annoyance.

For most people, though, this would have been a disaster. $200 is half a week’s pay. Or a full week’s if you can’t get a full-time schedule. Someone in that position probably wouldn’t have had the roadside assistance so would have also had to pony up for the tow (though, ironically, they probably would have had an older car which had a spare tire). They are also now late for work and might get fired. They definitely won’t be getting paid today, which is even more money gone.

This loss of $200 to fix your car now means you can’t afford something else. And not something trivial like eating out or games. But something vital like rent, insurance, or groceries. This fine line is why it is so hard for people to escape poverty. Studies have shown that to truly pull yourself out of the poverty trap, it can take 20 years with nothing going wrong.

This incident also highlights how hard it can be for people who are well off to understand the plight of people less well off. For people like me, this incident is an annoyance. An annoyance it would have been easy to blame others for. The driver of the beat-up old pickup truck I had been trying to get in front of. Or the people of the dilapidated neighborhood I was driving through for their poor quality roads. The lack of road signage certainly played a role, but it was my impatience that’s really to blame.

You go through an incident like this as a well-off person and then you hear a sob story from a less well-off person about the same kind of thing. You resolved the whole incident in a day. What’s wrong with them that they can’t do the same? They can’t afford to fix their car or they’re getting kicked out of their apartment for missing rent. They must suck at personal finance.

So you shake your head, congratulate yourself at how much better you are, tell them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and then you go vote Republican. Clearly, these losers don’t need any help. And the roads don’t need money for maintenance. Time to cut taxes so that the next time this happens to you, you’ll have even more money available to help yourself.