You have to love those marketers. The exterior color of my new car is gold, and not at all what I was expecting. They call it “tiger eye pearl”, explaining that it was inspired by tiger sightings during safaris when the vehicle was being off-road tested in Africa (right…). In fact, a new car was the last thing I had in mind this month. I was recently driving to speak at General Electric when my transmission started to act up. I was fortunate that my car was drivable, but the news at the service center was lousy. The transmission had failed prematurely at about 138K miles. For my 10-year-old car, it was a $6,000 repair that would take three months because of supply chain problems!

I needed a new car in three hours, not three months, so I was suddenly thrust into a purchasing decision. Also because of supply chain problems, the dealer had only one new sport utility vehicle on the lot — the successor to my old vehicle — and it was . . . you guessed it . . . “tiger eye pearl”. My wife and I have a debt-free lifestyle, but that got turned upside down. My old car was worth virtually nothing because of the transmission, and while I had some savings, it wasn’t enough to buy a car outright. So now after years of debt-free driving, I have a new car loan. To add insult to injury, my interest rate is higher than some because my credit rating is good but not great. Why? Because debt-free meant that I haven’t been making loan payments, which the world interprets as a credit risk!? These are the times when I need to stand firm for Biblical principles, even when they are counter-cultural. I continue to believe that “the borrower is a slave to the lender” (Proverbs 22:7), and I’ll be paying off my new car as soon as possible. Meanwhile, if you see a bright yellow object rambling down the road, it might just be me. 😊