The year of 2021 has been good for crypto. My favorite Ethereum is sitting at $2500+ right now which is higher than what I considered to be a best case scenario in 2016 when I did all the mining for it. To celebrate the fact it was so high and to hedge against it crashing down I began thinking of something we could cash out to get that would improve our lives for more than the short term.
When we got the freak hailstorm earlier this year suddenly the answer seemed more obvious. The storm was bad: my Kia has been in the shop for more than a month with little chance of ever being the same again, and the BMW was totaled and had a windshield busted. We fixed the windshield and frankly the car still ran fine but it looked terrible so the good feelings Lindsey was having finally driving a luxury car was lost. Personally the BMW always made me nervous as I knew a service bill on one of those could easily be larger than its total value. I saw the hailstorm as a way to get out of the car with most of the value as long as we replaced it before it needed any servicing. But I knew we weren't going to replace the BMW with a Camry, Lindsey always dreamed of driving a nice car and there wasn't a chance for downgrading her in life right now.
As soon as I decided the best move was to replace the car I immediately pivoted to getting Lindsey a Tesla. It was an easy decision: there was only one of their car models we could afford and she had always admired the brand. I figured she would quickly jump on the chance without me blocking the purchase, but to my surprise she acted very boomer about it and didn't want to order one until she could test drive it. In retrospect it is clear part of this was her trying to be very careful about a big purchase for us, and I think the other side of it was the fact that her fantasies about Tesla were related to a Model S that was always going to be outside of our affordability range. Eventually crypto crashed some which made me back off pushing for a new car, and in that time she convinced herself it was worth getting a Model 3 (funny how life works that way). She then called a Tesla sales person who basically told her test driving one would be hard and it would be better just to order one before the line got too big, which is exactly what Lindsey did in June.
Because crypto did go down some after hitting highs earlier in the year, Lindsey decided to sell off some of her Tesla stock to be able to afford the nicer longer range Model 3. At the end of it half was paid with Tesla stock (her big money win the last decade) and half was paid with crypto (my big money win this decade). True to our hoodrich status we traded assets for a new toy, which I will be honest I felt bad about at the end of June. But life changed in July.
As noted in this blog, Luna got sick again in early July. My original fantasies when we ordered the Tesla was that it would be the last car that Luna would ride in, but the reality was she didn't make it that far. After Luna's death suddenly the Tesla had a new mission and a new reason to be in our life. I realized that it represented the biggest piece of what Jeremy calls "retail therapy" that Lindsey would get for a long time, almost as if Luna knew and she went down right when the biggest possible pick me up for Lindsey was already ordered and on the way. The dog had good timing like that her entire life.
July was a tough month for our household. The costs both financially and physically of trying to save Luna had worn me out, but when I recovered from the physical toll I realized that she had done a good job helping me accept her death unlike with Xena. I had moved on by the day she died. For Lindsey it was different, Luna was her emotional support animal and her rock. Suddenly she started battling anxiety to the point where she was having trouble functioning, and it was impossible to catch her with a smile on her face. Add in Finn's own frustration with how the month went and it felt like a cloud was hanging over our family and the Tesla was the best chance to see some sunshine again.
Lindsey doesn't really believe in my perspective of emotional management (aka a car to emotionally replace a dog), but she began to want to the Tesla more and more as the month went on. She would check her delivery date daily and the constant values weeks out pressed her for a patience that doesn't come naturally to her. I too shared her impatience, as I was looking to get rid of the cloud hanging over our little family. Luna will be a hole in our lives for a long time, but as humans something new helps turn the page and move the story along and we needed that.
Finally we got to the end of the month and the car was scheduled to show up a day sooner than we thought it would. Lindsey was super excited to get it, and it so happened that day my parents were at the lake for the first time in a while and so we drove down to the lake in the new car to see them. Lindsey really enjoyed the speed and how nice it felt, I enjoyed that seeing her smile for the first time since Luna died. Finn loved riding in the "Tesla Car" as he called it. "Weeeeeeeee" he would say from the back seat when she went fast. Mom and dad were impressed and the trip went great- the first day of the car was filled with good memories.
In fact the morning after we got it when I went to get him out of bed he proclaimed to me the equation he had worked out at night: Tesla car was mommy's car! He was so excited to get in it that day that we rode around town just to do it, and he soaked up being able to see "the sky" from the back seat. Finn hadn't completely recovered from the events of July- just yesterday he was in the yard saying "where is Abu?" But with the Tesla there is something fun and new we can do with him, and something we can all bond over. That sort of pick me up is worth all the pretend money in the world in my opinion.
Comments
Post a Comment