To say that the past couple of weeks for our family have been bad would not really do our past two weeks justice. A couple of weeks ago my husband went to Walgreens to pick up a prescription for me. After finding out that pharmacy was closed (this was the third pharmacy too) he went to the car to head home. When he tried to start the car though, the radio would come on, but nothing else. He called me and had me come out to help him.

My first stop was the neighbor’s to borrow some jumper cables (an investment we really should make) and I headed out there to give him a jump. We tried to jump the car, but still nothing happened. Defeated, I called our insurance company to see about getting our car towed and assistance with finding a shop in our area. Our insurance company offers 24 roadside assistance and helps you get your vehicle where it needs to be repaired. They sent out a towing company to tow our car over to the dealership.

The dealership called in the morning and said that we needed a new starter…that would cost $400. This must be a very special starter because we were floored. We asked our brother-in-law if he could help us, since he has been working in an a body shop, and he agreed for an exchange of babysitting for their anniversary night.

The part cost a little over $100 and a babysitting job. Who could beat that price?

Several days later, my husband is driving to work and loses power on his car. He is able to pull the car to the side of the road and put it in park. He tries to turn the key and nothing happens. He tries again and the same scenario repeats itself. He pulls the key out and the engine starts turning over and over and over. And the car catches on fire.

He is able to get the fire out, but what is left is a lot of melted wire and a car that doesn’t work. We look up recalls on engines and his car had been recalled for the engines catching on fire. Thinking we were smart, we sent it over to the dealership. They said that it didn’t fall under the warranty and we would need a cable replaced that went to the starter. Total price to repair a couple of melted wires and a cable…$630.

This is when I encouraged my husband to call around to places that he had heard were good. We were able to find a very honest and reliable auto repair place who said he could do the same exact thing for $280. What a difference!

I was left with the dirty work of calling the dealership in the morning to close out the account and get the car towed to the other place. The guy that I spoke to wanted to know why I was taking it out, where I was taking it, and what the quote was. I was as polite as could be and explained that it had nothing to do with them personally, but we simply could not afford the rate that he was giving us. He said he would call us back to let us know how much diagnostics cost.

When he called back, he began with, “We don’t normally do this BUT…” and then he basically matched the price of the other place.

Five minutes of calling around saved us about $300.

Here are some other resources for getting the best deal when it comes to car repair:

Finding an Automotive Repair Shop You Can Trust
Finding a Mechanic
Finding Honest Repair Shops

If you or your husband are handy, it is possible that you could fix the car yourself. Look into what resources your local library offers. For example, in our area, patrons have access to The Chilton Library just by logging into their library account. This online Automotive Repair Database provides the detailed information you need to tackle both simple and complex auto repair jobs. Do-it-yourselfers can count on reliable auto repair answers to topics such as, general information and maintenance, troubleshooting, engine performance & tune-up, brakes, emission control, chassis, electrical and more.

While I wouldn’t recommend going to the cheapest shop, I would recommend going through good referrals from your family and friends and then comparing those rates. The dealerships will usually not have the best price on auto repair, but they might be willing to match quotes from their competitors.

Potential Monthly Savings: $100 or more

Sound Off: Any tips you would like to share on car repair and maintenance that have helped save your family money?

We have just lowered our house payment by about fifty dollars each month. How did we do this? Well, we finally got rid of our PMI.

If you don’t have PMI, you are already a step ahead of us. This was our first house and we really didn’t understand the concept of PMI and what exactly we were paying for. We are quite familiar with PMI now that we have gotten to pay for it for four years.

PMI stands for Private Mortgage Insurance and it is an unfortunate expense that can get added to your account if you do not have twenty percent down on your house. Why would you have to pay this insurance in addition to your homeowners policy? This insurance is added to your payment to protect the lender, just in case you should default on your loan. The lender also believes requiring PMI is also good for you, as the buyer, because they could not offer the loan to you if they didn’t have this type of insurance.

How much is PMI? Well, according to Quicken Loans, generally it calculates to about one-half percent of the total loan amount. Let’s say you buy a home for $200,000 and put five percent down or $10,000. The annual cost of PMI on your $190,000 mortgage might run $950 a year, adding an extra $80 to your mortgage payment each month.

Getting the PMI removed from our mortgage turned out to be much harder than we thought. By law, this insurance is supposed to be removed automatically once you have invested 22% into the house. The Federal Trades Commission website states, “For home mortgages signed on or after July 29, 1999, your PMI must – with certain exceptions – be terminated automatically when you reach 22 percent equity in your home based on the original property value, if your mortgage payments are current. Your PMI also can be canceled, when you request – with certain exceptions – when you reach 20 percent equity in your home based on the original property value, if your mortgage payments are current.”

Since we had been paying an extra hundred dollars each month on our house payment, in addition to making an extra house payment each year, we reached the amount required quicker than the lender had expected. Since we were still under the 22% we were told we would have to have an appraisal done on our home.

For $145, we had an appraiser (who was chosen by our mortgage lender) come out to our house and do an appraisal. She had to concur that our house had not declined in value due to our neglect or due to market values decreasing. I have to admit that I was quite nervous because the market in our area is extremely slow and houses just aren’t selling for what they used to.

Lucky for us, we met the standard and within a week we were notified that the PMI would be removed immediately and we would no longer have to pay for it.

I will admit that we had to jump through some hoops to make this happen. When we contacted our lender, they said that we couldn’t request PMI removal by telephone. We would have to submit the request in writing to the company. Upon request, they would then send us a letter, within six weeks, to explain what we would need to do to get it removed. This letter came and then we had to submit the check for the appraisal. This took another two weeks to set up and then we had to wait for the appraisal to come through. I am not surprised that this was such a lengthy procedure, after all, they are making extra money by our family carrying this.

Despite this lowering our house payment, we have continued to pay the same amount. Our taxes have lowered and the insurance was dropped, lowering our payment by about $115. We just pretend like these changes never happen and continue to pay the same. The same philosophy is applied to our credit card and student loan payments. If we could pay it before, we can pay it now.

We have lofty financial goals of having everything paid for in seven years time, utilizing the good old snowball effect. Dreams of owning our home and paying down all of our debt don’t seem as far away as they used to. Visualizing that feeling is what keeps us going in the direction we are headed.

If you are looking for more information on PMI and how to get rid of it, I would highly recommend reading this article, by CNN Money, and taking the actions suggested.

Potential Monthly Savings: $50 or more

Sound Off: Have you made any steps toward lowering your house payment? Do you have any personal experiences with PMI or PMI removal?