Hey all,

I try to keep my personal life separate from my life online, but I'm in one of those situations where I don't have much choice. I'm trying to raise money for a used car, and I've got a limited window to make it happen.

The fundraiser is here: https://gofund.me/de843bf9

A bit of background: a couple weeks ago, while on my way back up to the mountains following some late-afternoon errands, a deer jumped out into the road in front of my '07 Prius - I nearly avoided hitting it, but clipped it with the front edge of the car.

The damage looked minor, and I was able to drive it the rest of the way back, and even drove back down to run a few more errands the next day before handing it over to the inspection company - but the day after they towed it away, they called to say that the unibody frame had been fractured, which pushed the repair costs past the repairable value of the car. The Prius was declared a total loss, and USAA cut a check for a bit over $5k for the car.

$5k isn't enough for any car that could be trusted not to fall apart the instant it left the lot, so I started up a GoFundMe to try and raise the funds to afford something usable while I looked around. I finally managed to find something, a 2012 Mazda 3 in good condition that strikes a good balance between affordability and reliability - but the GFM was still sitting at $0 raised when I went to check.

I readjusted the goal to specifically focus on what I needed to pay for the car, including the price tag, dealership fees, licensing and registration fees, emissions test, new plates from the DMV (joy...), and if there's enough raised, hopefully a set of winter tires before the mountains get buried in snow again.

I don't know how much time I have to make this happen, so I'm cranking up the urgency more than I really feel comfortable with. Even if I can arrange the remaining funds as a loan from my family, they'll use the debt as an excuse to make my life hell - I'm trying to get away from these people, not give them more grounds to keep me trapped.

Any help at all is greatly appreciated. Even if you can't afford to give anything right now, giving the fundraiser a signal boost to spread it around to more people could be what makes the difference - my own reach is pretty limited, so there's only so much I can do by sharing it on social media.