HelixDab2

To my original claim - finding something that's reasonable mileage, and in good mechanical condition, for under $10k, is quite a challenge at this point. I sold a 2008 Honda Civic Si with >200,000 miles last year that was not running, had rust, and generally needed a fair amount of work, and had an asking price of $4k. I got fifty offers in under 12 hours. It was crazy.

That's just one of the many fun things about living in the mountains.

So, um, 400M rockets.

Yeah, that ain't happenin'.

If I took my bike to town, it would take me about an hour, give or take. To get home would be about four hours. It's 15 miles, one way, with about 2200' of elevation change.

Average price of a used car in the US, right now, is $29,000. Which means that for a $554 payment, it's going to be 5.4 years rather than 1.5. From there, you need to figure out how many miles you put on a car in a year, make some rough guesses about how many miles the average car has left before the cost to repair exceeds the cost of replacing, etc. Obvs. a high mileage used car is going to require significantly more maintenance than a new car will (...in most cases, as long as you aren't buying a new Land Rover or Jaguar), so you'll need to figure that in as well. You'll probably want good insurance, even if you're only required to carry minimal liability insurance, because any accident could be catastrophic for your finances if you can't afford to repair your car.

It's a bit of a death spiral; wages are still too low, car prices are too high.

If you have the money, the most efficient way to solve this is to install an on-demand tankless water heater at every single outlet that has hot water (e.g., not the toilets). The downside is that this is a very expensive way to solve the problem; not only do you need to buy the water heaters, you need to run new electrical to every single one (or new gas lines, which would be even more expensive). The upside is that you get hot water as fast as a recirculating pump, but without the cost of constantly running a pump and your water heater.

Many years ago I lived in an apartment in San Diego that had recirculating hot water (there was no water heater in my apartment); I guess the apartment complex figured that the cost of constantly heating the water was cheaper than the cost of the water that they would otherwise lose down the sewer while people were waiting for the water to heat up in their apartment.

Dave Ramsey hasn't tried to buy a reliable used car in the last decade, at least. You aren't going to find anything under about $10k that's actually reliable where I am. A mid-90s Toyota with 300,000 miles maybe, but not anything under 150,000.

I think you wildly underestimate the amount of trash we're be talking about here. This wouldn't be a rocket, this would be thousands, or hundreds of thousands of rockets. And that's just the start.

how could you ever have a normal relationship with your pro-Trump neighbor/father-in-law/Uncle/Barber or what ever again?

...Why would I want to? Seriously, why would I want to have a relationship with people that have shown me that the things they value are antithetical to the things I value? I don't give a fuck if people are nice to me; I want people to be kind across the board.

Going with your 5' x 5' x 5' size, that should weigh about 132,624 pounds, or about 66.3 tons. The price, as of 2018, was about $30,000/ton. That works out to be about $2M.

Still a pretty heft prize.

I think of garlic as being more herb-like than spice. Same with caramelized onions.

Depending on the exact part of life that I want to spice up, clarified butter is nice.

Mmmmm, butter.