February 7, 2024

Early Bird Gets the... Extra Inspection? My DMV Mishap & Your Thoughts on Vehicle Checks

READ TIME - 9 MINUTES

At a glance

Here's what to expect:

My mom and I turned 67 years old this past week!
I got a vehicle inspection ONE day too early. (You read that right.)
Texas vehicle inspections are going away — but not entirely...

Ryan's Notes: Birthday weekend 2k24

This past week has been a whirlwind! It was my mom and I's birthday Monday (we turned a combined 67 years old), which we celebrated with family and friends last weekend — it was great!

A group of people pose for a picture around the dinner table at Mesero, a restaurant in Fort Worth, for Ryan's birthday. — The "kids" were seated at another table in true old-school fashion at Mesero. (Our party was too big for one table, lol.)

We had THREE cakes (red velvet and Reese's from Nothing Bundt Cakes, and an Italian cream cake) which I'm sure broke some sort of foodie record. (Tl;dr, we're serious about dessert and HAD options!)

A Reese's peanut butter Nothing Bundt Cake with white and yellow icing. — I don't know that others were as big of a fan of it as I was, but Reese's Chocolate Peanut Butter Nothing Bundt Cake was life-changing — remarkable enough for me to include a picture.

Another exciting part of our birthday celebration was hanging out with some middle school friends! It had been at least a few years since I caught up with my friend Cedric!

Ruwayd (left), Ryan (me in the middle), and Cedric (right) posing in different directions for multiple cameras. It's 2024 — you'd think we'd have nailed this by now.

Catching up with Cedric reminded me that the best friendships are those where time is no factor; it's as if no time passes when you haven't seen them in a long while. I'm always really grateful for friendships like those.

Aside from celebrating our birthday, the new spring semester started, and it has already packed a MEGA punch! I'm taking three courses — Topics in Federal Income Tax, Topics in Financial Accounting, and Intermediate Accounting II — which are BEEFY classes.

I'm (supposedly) reading a lot, doing lots of homework, discussion board replies, you know, all the academic things. I'll spare you the rant on why I think discussion board replies are the biggest waste of time...

(Also, in case you didn't know, I am working toward my Master of Professional Accountancy and aim to obtain my CPA license within the next year or so.)

Our charity is gearing up to re-re-re-re-re-re-launch. I've genuinely learned the most I ever had about nonprofits in 2023 — and I'm really excited to share more about that journey and more very soon.

My awful vehicle inspection experience

Alright, friends, here's this week's rambling: vehicle inspections. We have a cargo van (don't ask why...) (just kidding...I'll get into this more in another email) (also, I'm pretty sure, grammatically, you can't put multiple sets of parenthesis together, but we should totally make that a thing)...

SO, we have a cargo van, and the sticker expires in April of this year. To be a ✨proactive king✨, I decided to inspect our vans to renew our registration online and have one more thing to check off the to-do list.

You know it's a huge to-do list when it spans THREE sticky notes...#SendHelp

This past Wednesday (1/31), I went to my usual state inspection place. I was concerned we wouldn't be able to fit in the garage since the van is relatively high.

There have definitely been ahem a few instances where we had "clearance issues," which was new for me, given my familiarity with smaller vehicles like a Nissan Altima — not a giant cargo van that's almost as high as an 18-wheeler.

Thankfully, we didn't have to pull all the way in — the state inspection computer is now portable. (I'm not sure if this was always a thing or if it's more recent, but I'm pretty sure the technicians always had to hook the car up directly to the inspection computer using some 10,000-foot cable.)

Before the technician hooked up the portable computer, he asked, "Are you sure you want to do the inspection now? You have until April." I nodded yes; I was eager to get this thing DONE!

He hooked it up, waited a few minutes, printed the inspection report, swiped my card, and we were outta there.

When I got home, I went to Texas.gov (not an ad for the Texas government 🤣) to renew our van's registration, and the system wasn't detecting the inspection, as it has in the past. I tried refreshing, logging out, and logging back in using a different browser, but nothing came up.

I then thought to myself..."can you register too early? I'm pretty sure I've seen where anything within six months is fine."

A quick Google search revealed that it's 90 days (~three months) — not six.

During my Texas vehicle inspection research debacle, I found a website from the Texas DMV called "When Do I Inspect?" with the upcoming sticker expiry dates and the appropriate time to get an inspection.

Don't make the same mistake I did...it's http://twostepsonesticker.com/.

Once I selected our van's expiry date (04/24), a palm-to-forehead moment happened.

February 1. That's the first date I could have gotten the van inspected.

The earliest I could have the van inspected was February 1 — and I did it ONE DAY EARLIER on January 31.

Leave it to me to register a vehicle too early — by 91 days instead of 90 days.

I don't know that I've actually been too early to anything in my life.

This was a big moment for me.

For a second, I wondered if I should be proud for being too early or if I should have been bummed that I was out of the $25.50 vehicle inspection fee.

(Honestly, I was more bummed out.)

So, the next day, I called the DMV to see if they felt empathetic that day; the short story is they weren't.

The woman on the phone said that it had to be within the inspection window and there was nothing they could do.

I accepted defeat. Another inspection was imminently on the horizon.

I thanked her for her time, wondering how to face the inspection technician again.

*cue the ruminations in my head*

‍Thought 1: I could be honest and tell him I had the van inspected a day early. (How embarrassing.)

Thought 2: Or, I could say this was a different van. (Isn't that gaslighting?)

Thought 3: I could go to a different place. (Eh, that's extra.)

In the end, I plan on going back and getting another inspection.

Let's be honest...the most likely scenario is that he probably won't remember me, anyway.

—

On a serious note, now would be a great time to inform you that in 2025, vehicle inspections are going away if you live in Texas.

Woo-hoo!

There is a caveat: if you live in a heavily populated county, you will still need to get your vehicle emissions tested.

Per the KXAN article above, "The 17 counties that require emissions inspections include those surrounding the major metro areas, other than San Antonio: Harris, Fort Bend, Brazoria, Montgomery, Galveston, Williamson, Travis, Dallas, Tarrant, Denton, Collin, Rockwall, Kaufman, Ellis, Johnson, Parker, and El Paso."

Fingers crossed you don't live in one of the counties above!

(Unfortunately, I do.)

That aside, upon researching the new vehicle registration and inspection law, I was interested in the massive opposition to doing away from vehicle inspections.