Zander's Inside Voice

This week has been a huge up and down sort of week. I don’t know why it’s been so crazy but it’s also been interesting. I feel like I have learned more about myself this week than anything. I have been moderately productive at a time when I start to feel like I can’t get much done. But I am still getting lots done around the house. I hope next week is as productive.

There’s one thing that I have really struggled to complete throughout my entire adult life…my car registration. Being military, I moved from state to state every few years and the process to get a car registered in the new state is always a bridge too far. Sometimes I ended up getting a new car before the other registration ran out. With one state, we still owned our home there, so I was able to keep that state’s registration. But now my registration has been expired for awhile. A long while, actually.

In this state, both owners have to be present to request a title transfer request. Requesting the title transfer is another process in itself. You need all these random pieces of information and paperwork and the other owner. The ex is also listed as the owner although I have always been the one to make the payments. It is officially listed as mine on the divorce decree but since I’m still making payments on it, I can’t take the ex off without refinancing the car. There’s only 2.5 years left to pay on it, so it hardly seems worth it to mess around with another car loan just to take him off of it right now. Plus that’s another gigantic amount of work for my brain to wrap itself around.

So to get this done now, I need a Power of Attorney from the ex to request the title be transferred. Then I need another one to actually register the car. I take the POA (which I do have now) to the tax office I think and then they request the title transfer. I actually have the financing company’s address. Once the new title is received, they let me know that I am good to register the car. At that point, I need to take myself, my car, the registration POA, my insurance information, to finally get the registration done. This process has taken me literally years to wrap my mind around because I moved here almost two years ago. i went back to the old state and was able to renew it once when I was visiting my parents. But that no longer feels right to do. Plus insurance in this state is SO MUCH cheaper. It would be helpful in these weird times of inflation to save some money on something.

So I think next week I will finally be ready to get myself together and finally get this car registered and finally legal again. I know on the surface it seems so easy, but this is something I have struggled with in every single state that I have moved to. Thankfully I won’t have to worry about this again because I don’t really plan to move to any other state permanently. Eventually we hope to do winters in Florida but I’m not sure I would bother registering a car there. Maybe I can have cars in this state and then a car in Florida and just insure the cars when we are in that state. That might be a bigger hassle, though. But it’s definitely something to think about for the future!

But for today, I will be happy that I have a great plan to actually get the impossible done next week! I feel myself acknowledging that it is time and that I can actually do it now. And that will be enough for me to push through.