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Owning a SUV is expensive.

Over the last few days I have begun to realise that owning an SUV, even a midsized SUV like the 2006 Saturn Vue that we own. In the past two days I have spent $1239.66 on tyres and repairs the our Vue, but to be fair, this is the first money we’ve spent since buying the car in 14 months.

I had a potential nightmare situation when buying the tyres from Firestone, they messed up the tickets, charged me too little, then realised their mistake and refused to charge the difference to the debit card, charging me the entire $797.70 on top of the $625.94 they originally charged, before refunding the original amount back to the card, which takes between 24 and 48 hours to become available again! It’s lucky that this happened at tax time and we had enough funds to cover both charges while being able to do what we needed to do in the following couple of days!

But I have to say that the car feels and handles much better, new tyres make more of a difference than I thought, the old tyres were Firestone Destination LE, the new tyres are Bridgestone Dueler H/T D684 II BL and the grip difference is astonishing. Having the wheels aligned also helps, the front wheels were facing on opposite directions, only slightly but enough if effect handling! I can now get my foot down in the wet without wheelspinning upto 20mph, even the automatic gear changes are smoother, it genuinely feels like a completely different car!

We also spent $441.96 on getting our Vue serviced, oil change, multi-point inspection and getting the rear driver side door fixed, it has been jammed shut since last summer. It’s nice to have the kids have their own door, I was fed up of having to pull the front passenger seat back and forth to load the kids into the car, but $353.97 for a latch and lock seems a little on the expensive side!

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