I would do my best to avoid charging the repair against a credit card, 2J, unless you can pay it off the very first month, which is fine...because after that they charge 18% I think, it's easy to get way behind in debt on that kind of a loan.
I hate putting more money in a car than the car is worth, since that money is in a sense unrecoverable, but sometimes it could be the least expensive, and thus logical, way to go. Kind of like paying rent on housing.
Pray that it doesn't cost more than $300-500 to fix it...because that's all we can afford to pay out of pocket...and even that would make things unbearably tight for about a month. I won't even do that until after Christmas.
If it's $700 or so...there's no way we'll be able to pay for it. The car would just sit till Steve graduates and gets another job. Unless we charged it, which I really hate to do...
See why I'm feeling so lost?
Well, the general consensus here in the Hole is "Find out what's wrong". No sense worrying about anything else till after I know what I'm up against.