Car repairs. Is there a bigger money pit out there?

The past couple of weeks have been stressful for us. A few weeks ago I went out to get in the van to go to school and it wouldn't start. I pulled the battery and had it tested and it was fine so the problem lay elsewhere. We ended up having the van towed to a garage and after more than an hour it turned out to be a loose connection to the passive anti-theft system. The system is designed so that if power is cut to it power is cut to the entire electrical system. So they reconnected the wire and charged me $12 for the time it took them. No big deal, except... We've known for a while that there was a slow leak somewhere in our coolant system but no one has been able to find it. Well it obviously finally got big enough that these guys found it. To make a long story a little less long we waited until Dee Dee's parents were in town, so we could have the use of their car, and put the van in for the repairs this past Monday. I picked it up 1 day and $950 later. Of course that amount only covered the absolutely necessary repairs. The total bill would have come to around $1300 if I had gotten them to do everything that needed doing. Anyway, we got the van back and Dee Dee's mom left to drive back out to where they are parked in their motorhome. Ten minutes later we got a call from her. Her car broke down. Their problem was with the transmisison and ended up being significantly more expensive than ours. Everything is back up and running again now but finances are tighter than ever as you can imagine. I know God never promised that seminary would be easy, but sometimes I pray it could be just a little less stressful.