Cars are expensive beasts

I am a proud owner of a car, a 1996 Subaru Impreza LX sedan, greenish in colour.

It's an expensive beast.... Petrol is reasonable, I get around the 10km/L mark in city driving and about 13km/L on highway. Even with increasing petrol prices, it is still reasonable to drive in most situations, except that I can get offpeak train tickets if I travel after 9am. That makes it cheaper to go via train than by car, but I still drive when I need to lug stuff around or get to places that are annoying to get to by public transport.

That said though, this time of the year in May/June is always expensive. Why?
Car registration/renewal. In Australia, it is different to other countries of course, we have three compulsory things to renew your car. There is the car registration itself, a "Green Slip" which is a compulsory third party insurance for when other peoples properties and people are injured by your vehicle regardless of who is at fault, and the "Pink Slip" which is a vehicle safety check. The cost of all of these three components for me this year was quite an expense, and my non-compulsory comprehensive insurance is due by the 13th July and I have yet to pay it.

Even when I was still regular pay as my scholarship, this is still a tough time to pay it off because it is quite a large sum of money being charged in a shortish period of time....

I just got paid tonight, $634.51. 100% of that pay went straight into my credit card to pay for my green slip and pink slip and some of my car rego. Lets say, I only managed to pay off 2/3 of what was owing on my credit card from todays entire pay packet....

Let me say again, cars are expensive beasts....