The most important thing to get when you move to LA

In honor of my significant other who just paid off a car loan in record time, I’m going to tell you the most important thing to get when you take my advice and move to LA (if you don’t already live here).  That’s right, you guessed it…a working car!

Allow me to tell you a story.  Once upon a time, I had the worst car on earth.  It was well over ten years old when I bought it with a small amount of loan money I had squirreled away in college.  I needed the car on short notice to lug tons of heavy equipment for a class I was taking.  That car ended up being crazy bad (duh) but in my defense, it ran okay at first.

My old car...just kidding, this is way nicer.

Anyway, when the car went bad, it went bad fast and started breaking down ALL THE TIME. Right after college, I was working a night shoot and when I was driving home at 4 AM the car broke down on the 10 freeway (busted radiator).  Yeah, that sucked, and after spending mucho dinero (that I didn’t have) to fix it, the car never ran right again.  I was almost fired from a couple jobs after that when it broke down and I couldn’t make it in to work/I came in late.  On top of that, I was nervous to even apply for jobs knowing there was a chance I wouldn’t make it on time if I got an interview.

So, don’t come to LA without a working car or even a car that has occasional problems because I promise you, those problems will multiple times 1000 at the worst possible time (like on the 10 at 4 in the morning) and besides, it's way better to put your hard earned money towards a car payment for a reliable car than keeping your clunker on life support.  Also, like it or not, this is still a car town.  Even if you’re not commuting much (you will be) you still need to be able to get to interviews, meetings, and just from A to Z (sometimes on short notice).  So yeah, I’ll say it again, the most important thing to get when you live in LA is a working car, take the time to save up for one.