Got A car!
Ford Escape 2012 XLT, Standard transmission.
One of my big goals this year was to get a car. I never owned a car, never gave a crap about cars or never needed a car.
Didn’t know what kind to get, where to get it, what to look out for, what to spend etc. Literal 0 knowledge of car ownership.
At first I was leaning towards a sports car but quickly found out they are useless money pits and don’t look very cool with a bike rack. Going to the grocery store with your Dodge Challenger worth 30k is kind of a waste. Having 400 horsepower is about 5 times more than any vehicle needs to do anything legal, so what’s the point other than looking cool? I can’t quite afford spending 30k on just looking cool… yet.
My Colorado friend has a minivan and we really enjoyed it for biking. You just shove 3 bikes in there with zero problem. I got a taste for it because I hate bike racks and hate fiddling with wheels to cram them into tiny hatchbacks.
Karen mobile? No, secret super pro bike racer mobile.
Then I took that solo road trip to Washington State: https://www.thepoxbox.com/posts/colorado-and-washington-trip
Turns out renting a SUV for a week and sleeping in hotels adds up pretty damn fast; about 150$/day. But it was fun. I GOT A TASTE FOR IT. So I started looking at how I could buy a van and just sleep in it on road trips while keeping my bike inside. I don’t want no Sasquatch stealing my shit while I sleep.
What I rapidly discovered is that good used vans are damn expensive ( 10-15k ) and the one good kind ( Dodge Grand Caravan ) for my purposes is sort of a sketchy one that tends to have problems right around the mileage most people were selling them at. I also am still single and possible driving a van is giving up a little too soon. I also don’t want to live in this thing full-time, I just needed it to have a bed and room for my bike and some camping supplies.
So ultimately I opted for a SUV.
THINGS I HAVE LEARNED ABOUT CARS THIS YEAR:
1- No, cars don’t lose 50% of their value when you drive them off the lot.
Looking for SUVs I quickly discovered that people all wanted the exact same two: Hondas and Toyotas. 20 year old Toyota 4Runners with endless miles were going for 10-20k still. Maybe these lose about 10% of their value when you drive them off the lot. 50% after 15 years, if that.
But that’s not true of all cars.
The one I bought has lost about 70% of its original value. As a used vehicle that makes it a much more palatable offer now compared to the top brands because a comparable Toyota or Honda would cost me easily twice the price.
2- New cars are ludicrously expensive now.
So if a Toyota loses to little value, why not just buy a new one? It’ll still be worth 90% of its value in 3 years. Yeah well new ones are 45-60k now. Whoops. You can get a functionally equivalent vehicle for 25% that price. Even if you total your car 3 times you’re still coming up ahead.
3- No one wants to drive Standard and Standard transmissions are cheaper to repair.
I got a pretty good deal ( I think ) on my car because I drive manual and if it breaks you can replace the transmission for 1-2k instead of scrapping the entire car. That matters a lot when you’re buying a used car with 100k miles on it already. You might not be that far off from replacing a transmission and then you’re basically out a few grand and should have just bought a newer one instead. But not manual! It’s also fun to drive and you feel like a badass James Bond.
Here’s my sweet SUV in all its glory:
Financial Reasoning of this splurge
I’m still single so I can fuck off into the wilderness for a month or two if I want. Now at 150/day while renting a car + sleeping in hotels, just one month of sleeping in the car out of the year is $4500 in my pocket. If I do in in-between renting? Even more. Two months of SUV bike life between renting is a solid 10k in savings vs the alternative. At the very least I save the rent ( 2500-3000$ ) which is an optional expense like driving around in a car to bike.
On top of that I have the benefit of easier grocery shopping and of using Marketplace to buy/sell used stuff ( and free stuff ) much easier. Those savings should amount to around the gas I’ll be buying for the car or something.
At the end of the day I also can afford this given my finances, even if I never work a day in my life. Given that I should live a while longer and likely will do more art related work… I should be fine with wasting this money on a SUV.
So what’s next?
I’m currently working out how to semi-convert this into a camper car. I will drive it up North and bike around the Island as a test run. I might use it to move and scope out places to live on the mainland.
Goals assessment time:
1-Learn about corporate taxes and investing through multiple corporate accounts.: 5 / 20 — ALREADY MAXED
2-Find a place to live: 8 / 20 — NEXT YEAR :/
Still not done. I’ve been gone 5 months out of 12 this year, pretty much. Paying double the rent when I’m not even there makes zero sense. I had started planning to just stay here and travel the world a bit since airbnb prices in Europe ( or whatever) aren’t that much more than just renting in BC at this point. But Canada’s dumbshit covid measures have made me change my plans to now exploring just Canada doing carlife, probably from mainland BC. There’s also that dating didn’t particularly pan out as I had hoped so why would I bother getting a place? For me? I don’t give a fuck. At no point in 2021 was my lack of my own place to live a problem for me. While sad, it’s also saved me a bunch of money I guess.
3-Put on 10 pounds of muscle
Well I weighed myself on my crappy scale recently, I believe I’m around 5 pounds heavier and about as lean or a bit leaner than last year. Not likely I’ve gained 10 pounds though. I’ve also biked 16 000km this year so that doesn’t help muscle gain. I think I did ok.
4-Get a car: 30 / 20 —— DONE
5-Discover 50 new songs: 28 / 50
Good progress but there’s no way I make it. Just feels like everything new is total garbage and I’ve heard most old things. To be fair I could have spent more time on this, only listened to a few hours a week if that. There’s just too much suck to go through to find the good music, listening to 10 hours of crap to find one good song just seems like not the most fun way to spend time.
6-Ride a Motorcycle: 4 / 10. — I QUIT
Classes are fully booked for the time being on the island…. I started looking too late. So won’t be this year. I also don’t care much about this anymore, I will be busy with other things and I don’t want to smash my face on pavement going 120kph unless it’s on my road bike, like a true champ.
7-Sell one altered Magic: The Gathering card. — DONE —
8- Keep this blog updated and do a mid-year reassessment.
Hey I kind of did that!