I Gambled. I Lost... Sort Of

My 2001 Nissan Pathfinder is the first Japanese car I've ever personally owned.

I LOVE many American cars but I keep my cars for 5 - 7 years and, frankly, I can't afford an American car that has to last that long. Sorry, but my experience and tons of research data support the claims of lower reliability in American cars.

If I was a baller and traded/leased cars for a max of 3 years, I might consider a phat Yukon... but I'm not stacking cheese like that.

So, when I bought the Pathy and they offered an extended warranty (75,000 miles/5 years for $800) I was like "HELL YEAH !!" because I figured I'd EASILY rack up that amount of repairs. Figure that an alternator repair goes for $600 on the Pathy (at the dealership they say; at NAPA or Advance it would be more like $100) and you've got a bargain on the extended warranty.

Well, I gambled on buying the warranty and I lost; I think.

I did not make my money back but on the upside I've had a car that's been uber-reliable for 5 years now so it's kinda win-win.

The numbers:
Warranty: $800
Total deductible for 3 repairs: $150
Total: $950

Repairs (cost disregarding deductible): $650

Which leaves me with a net loss of $300. Well, that's still not bad considering my last Buick cost me around $2,000 by the time it was 5 years old. And the Buick continued to rack up around $1,000 per year in repairs until we put it to sleep.