@urbex wrote:
@tcbofade wrote:
Truck might have to last forever. I spent $30K on it and that's the most we've ever paid for a vehicle... trucks are now so expensive that this one might have to last forever...
I feel your pain there. Before this one, I've owned over 50 different cars/trucks (50 is where I lost count, lol...I'm guesstimating the true number is somewhere around 75-80) and I can't recall ever having spent more than maybe $4K on a vehicle, at least for the initial acquistion, with three exceptions - the 4 I took loans on. There's about $40K wrapped up in a Suzuki Samurai and Pontiac Ventura sitting in the garage, all paid in cash, but initial purchase on them were $1,800 and $3,000 respectively.
I've had four car loans in my 30 years of driving experience. One at 18 for something like $6K, one 12 years ago at $14K, and the third about 5 years ago at $13K. I about had a heart attack writing out the check for the downpayment on my current one @40K. But then I looked at my maintenace and repair logs for my vehicles over the past decade, what has gone in to keeping the old stuff on the road, along with countless hours of downtime for repairs, and what fully restoring one of the old ones cost vs the cost of a new card....suddenly $40K for something that I can realistically get another 20 years out of didn't seem so bad any more.
I don't even pay for car washes. The local ones suck and even after you pay them $16 or $20, it's like "Where's the Beef!?" with all the soap, there's no bubbles, all the bird crap you came in with is still on your car.
I live in an apartment complex and obviously there's no faucets out there to hook up a hose to, so I got a battery powered pressure washer amd just draw the water out of jugs.
My spouse laughs at my cheapness because I noticed that whenever I buy Special Kitty cat litter at Walmart, it comes in these gigantic plastic jugs, and just 3-4 of them is more than enough to go out there and wash every last bit of the car and rinse it off.
It hardly takes any work. The power washer cost me $30 at Amazon, the car soap is really cheap. All these people lining up at the car wash every week to pay $16 or even $20 and it doesn't even do a good job. You use the thing I bought one time it paid for itself.
It sounds like a weed eater.
Combined with the portable washing machine I hide in my closet when I'm not doing the laundry, I'm saving at least $100 a month that's going right back into this guy's pocket as rent money. He has no idea. He lives in another city and he's never out here unless the city is threatening him.
I don't look like I have anything, and I feel like if I did, he'd be more aggressive about the rent. Pulling up in a $60,000 truck would send the message. The wrong message.
