My First Experience with UBER

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The other day I had to pick up my car from the mechanic. After 2 days and $700, I was less than excited about the idea of calling and waiting for a taxi – there aren’t too many taxi services in our area.

I reached out to my sister to see if she could give me a ride, but she was dealing with a stomach virus and was in no shape to drive. As I was just about to give up and call for a cab, my wife suggested that I give Uber a try.

Uber Review

Uber Taxi App Review

I downloaded the app and was prompted to set up an account with the service. The great thing about this is that you include a preferred payment method in your profile, so you don’t have to enter your credit card information each time you use the service.

Because of this, no money changes hands between you and the driver. He never even sees your payment information – Uber handles everything for both parties!

My Uber Review: What About the Features?

Once my account was set up, it only took a few seconds to request to be picked up near my house. They allow you to either enter the pickup address or let your GPS send your location to the driver. Once they connect you with a driver, you are given an ETA and can even track the exact location of the driver on a map!

I was told that my driver was 14 minutes away and I immediately spotted him on the highway near our home.

Once I walked to the pickup spot, I just watched both the map and the traffic while I waited. I knew what car to look for because Uber gives you that information when they first make the connection – you are also given the name and a picture of the driver along with his rating!

My wife asked me to text her once I got picked up, so I searched the app for the ability to text from within. Not only was I able to send her my current location, but I was also able to allow her to track the entire trip on a map!

If you don’t want to give someone that much information, you can just send them your ETA or (I think) just text alerts when you are picked up and dropped off.

The driver was very pleasant and the car was exceptionally clean! He was a former taxi driver and spent the trip explaining why he feels that Uber provides a better service for customers as well as a more desirable work environment for the drivers.

Based on my experience, I would recommend Uber to anyone who needs a quick ride and wants more options than a traditional taxi.

If you use this link to sign up for the service, then you get your first ride for free (up to a $20 value)! If you’ve used the service before, please leave your own Uber review in the comments’ section.

I Hate To Say This, But I Was Saved By A CREDIT CARD!!!

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I have written a few times on my weight loss blog about having to bring my car to the mechanic. I think I have made 5 trips since the end of November for the same problem.

During this time we have replaced practically the entire cooling system – including the radiator! After spending $1,600 to do this, my car started overheating a week or two later. At the same time, someone brought a car like mine (just one year older) in to my mechanic with the same exact problems. They found air in her cooling system just like mine! However, they did not detect any problems inside of her cooling system, as with mine.

This prompted him to check the Internet to see if this problem was common. He not only found tons of complaints in forums and other places, but he also discovered that this is something that GM knows about but are choosing to ignore. It seems that the problem is with the intake manifold gasket, and it usually happens after the car is already out of the warranty period.

It cost us about $650 to replace it (this was mainly labor, since the job took many hours), bringing our total to fix this problem up to $2,250! That doesn’t even included all of the countless hours on the road to and from the shop, who knows how much gas and wear & tear on both of our vehicles, as well as dozens of hours driving, worrying, and even sitting on the side of the road waiting for the engine to cool down.

[Find out how to save money on car repairs!]

I’ve talked in the past about how having an emergency fund can help when these types of necessary but unexpected expenses pop up. Fortunately, we were able to pay for some of these repairs (specifically replacing the intake manifold gasket) by tapping our emergency account. However, in order to cover the other $1,600, we would have had to drain the account completely!

Saved by Credit Card

I hate the idea of have a $0 emergency savings account, so we really needed to come up with another way to pay for these expensive repairs. Since we are deeply in debt bondage, we don’t have a lot of “wiggle room” when it comes to our expenses and our paycheck (most of our expenses consist of nothing more than debt payments), and although we try to keep a cushion in our checking account, we don’t have an extra $1,600 sitting around.

We could have tried to take out a personal loan, but I really don’t like the idea of owing people money. Another option would have been to take out a payday or other short-term loan, but we are really trying to avoid increasing the amount of interest we have to pay out this year.

So, as a personal finance blogger, I had to turn to the one place that was probably the least expected…a credit card! I’ve written about the benefits of credit cards in the past, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I don’t hate them. I just hate that many of us us them for the wrong reasons.

Last year my wife and I found a credit card that would allow us to charge any car repairs over $299 and have the interest deferred for 6 months. This means that if we can pay off the balance by the end of the 6-month period, we will have received an interest free loan. 🙂

Normally, I don’t like to be put in a position to have to place an expense (or multiple expenses as in this case) on a credit card, especially since we already have a ton of debt, but in this case it seemed to be our best option. The very worst case scenario (outside of us needing additional repairs) has us draining our savings at the beginning of the summer to pay for the repairs, but if we are able to use every extra dime to pay down the credit card, things won’t be as bad for us.

So this is definitely a case where having a credit card was a great benefit to us. I just pray that we can get back to moving in the right direction with our debt repayment plan…having our car need over $2,200 in repairs (and it needs more, plus my wife’s truck has a few things wrong with it as well) definitely set us back.

photo credit: Dan Esparza

Reader Questions

  1. Have you ever used a credit card to bail you out of a jam? Not, to buy a tablet or a toy, but for an actual emergency.
  2. Do you think we should have just emptied our savings account even though the credit card may not cost us an interest payments? If so, why?
  3. How do you feel about someone not having an emergency savings account at all, and just having a credit card or two (especially a rewards card) to pay for emergencies?