<prompt> Human: Hello personalfinance,A couple weeks ago I noticed my car 2010 VW Tiguan, about 90k miles making an odd noise. I called my mechanic but he was out of town and was unable to look at my car for about a week. In the mean time, my mom was going to drive my car as her commute is significantly less than mine. The next morning on her way to work, the car stopped running. It was towed to the shop and today I was told that a component came loos in the engine and caused significant damage, which called for a new engine that would cost about 8,000 all in. I bought the car used in July 2015 for around 15,000 and still owe just under 8,000 on it. My question is, do I spend the money to get it fixed? Or do I pay off the car and get what I can for it and replace it with a much cheaper, older car to hold me over until I can get back on my feet?Any help or advice would be appreciated, thanks!  <response>: Step one is to always get a second, or even a third, opinion of whats really wrong. You also get competing estimates from those shops so that you can determine if someones trying to screw you. 