So, yeah I’m so not riding the bus with colored and poor to laundromat at 6 AM this morning đ đ đ
The heat is still at 48 degrees and I’m chomping down carrot pancakes singing along to Ian Tyson, and I haven’t gone out and bought a 20-year old Honda Civic, giving up on dream of owning a Ford F-350 or whatever, but I was able to go out to folks house and do my wash on Martin Luther King Day yesterday.
It’s good, it gives me more time to thumb through the New York Times and Wall Street Journal đ° and mourn that I probably won’t reach that number on paper before my 43rd birthday because the Trumpster is going to crap on stock market again with his Delusions of Greenland. đŠ Don’t worry, the US will never invade Greenland, because Denmark will use a weapon of mass destruction against America – namely refusing to sell morbidly obese and rich Americans O-o-oh, Ozempic! Hell, I don’t even own a TV but I’ve seen crap on Interwebs. I know my net worth is just a fucking number, my 43rd birthday just a date, just like the debate in my own mind on how much I want to pay for that fucking Ford SuperDuty. Don’t forget how much more gas â˝ a SuperDuty will use, the big hike in insurance rates, how rough those HD trucks ride on the bumps and what bitch it’s going to be park. đ żď¸ Weren’t you planning to buy something smaller then Big Red, like a 20-year old Honda?
It was nice seeing the family đŞ but yeah, they’re getting old quickly and I’m a little scared with my dad driving, it’s obvious his vision isn’t what he once was, and I find myself reminding him to take his foot off the gas and not get a speeding ticket. đŽ Apparently I’ve heard he’s on Albany’s Most Wanted with the Speed Cameras, though so far at least from what I’ve heard, he’s only gotten city warning letters. đ Not only did I get my clothes washed and compost bucket emptied out, I got to spend some more time with the parents. Truth is I know this summer is probably my last best chance to get to Northern Michigan and Wisconsin, see if that’s a place I’m interested in retiring to and building my off-grid cabin with the horney buck goats and burn barrel there. âťď¸ I did wash out that plastic milk bottle for recycling, I’ll find a roadside recycling bin and I’ll get more milk tomorrow for my coffee. â I still should get milk delivered, I hate having to get rid of all that plastic trash especially without fire. đĽ Remember that money can pay for a 55-gallon drum and ammunition to put holes in it and all burnable packaging to send up into smoke.
Mom tried to get me to program her TV remote. đş Thing is I had no idea even how to turn the TV on, it’s one of those Smartry Pants TV â˘ď¸ without knobs. How would I know, I don’t have internet or television at home or even a computer anymore. đ The laptop sits at work most of the time. I mean if it involved Rstudio, awk, gcc, gdal, QGIS, python, or a bash script đť I could fix it but I couldn’t even figure out the menus on the Smarty Pants TVâ˘ď¸. I laugh at what a luddite I am when it comes to technology. Yes, I do want the XL trim on the Big Ford without all the digital displays.
I keep doing a deep dive into personal finance, and trying to figure out both the best ways to manage my investments and retirement to be tax efficent, but also grow and maintain wealth so I have that money to buy land and build or improve on that cabin when those days come. đĄ And mostly to assuage my guilt over buying a F-250 or F-350 in a few months. I’m at that point where taxes matter and more, and I do worry a bit about a deep recession or all the rules be broken like in the 1970s stagflation, and shit like triggering IRRMA and RMDs, though the later in my age group is now pushed back to age 75, and that point, I’m sure I’ll have that off-grid cabin, four-wheelers, yet another big-assed truck, cows, too many handguns, no longer be washing and recycling plastic, etc. đŽ I mean the burn barrel gots to eat and make black smoke and doxin, but don’t tell a liberal. Of course, the hell of it is when you watch YouTube about personal finance, auto dealer tips and tricks and buying an Ford SuperDuty, the next thing on your feed is about how people are broke with insane car payments. đ° I’m either paying cash or immediately retiring the loan, so I can put a F-U at the car stealership by getting them a charge-back on the loan.
It seem like on a second reading of the Colonie Planning Agenda, 
the two projects of interest aren’t going to be up for public comment, so I can be fucking crazy 
and ride my mountain bike on this 13 degree morning to work. 
See what you need is BETTER HELP, and I’m like but it will save a $1.30 bus fare and cold feels so good. I mean it’s good, I need to save money to buy the big-assed truck, and this whole thing started after parking next to sprawl developer with his big-assed SuperDuty at Colonie Planning Board. Did I mention it was Red? I keep looking at various listings for SuperDuty trucks, looking at things like the price, package, skid plates and lockers, and my eye keeps getting drawn towards Red 
colored trucks. Now that’s a classic example of extreme mental illness. At least slept well last night, so no listening to podcasts and endless ads for BETTER HELP and SO-FAT MATTERESSES. 
Hey, my inherited mattresses is better then the one I had a kid, it doesn’t have any springs yet taped over by duck tape.
I didn’t camp this past weekend without the truck, 
but I did go out for an evening walk. When I got home from Mom and Dad’s I thought about bike riding, but was feeling lazy and cold, and it felt so good under the heated blanket. 
I read for a while, watched more videos on truck buying, then got up and had some more pinto beans and onions, and saw people were talking about the northern lights, 
and thought I should go out, get some exercise, enjoy the crisp night air smelling like silage from Preska’s dairy and see the stars. Kind of hazy and cloudy though when I walked. It was good though, I’ve been enjoying the evening walk again. Tonight though it will likely be too cold.
So yeah, Happy Tuesday! đď¸ Second gear of week and third of the month. How truly bad can the improved Ford ten speed be on the SuperDuty? There is snow but no so much ice, đ¨ď¸ so maybe I can ride the rail trail, though Corning’s Hill is always a safer alternative, bar of course the NY 32-US 9W merge at rush hour on a mountain bike. But at least I won’t break a spoke. I definately want to ride in and avoid all the security and protestors at the Empire Plaza đ˛ the more I think about it. Make money, build data frames, and deal with random broken systems and try to make my delusions of grandeur in the data unit đž into something useful, as everything moves at State Government office speed, as I stare out my window and look at city old garbage heap and city water department’s SuperDuty pickups, lined up in yard, thinking some day that can be mine. đ And then I can take it up to Green Mountains, work remote with my solar panels and cell booster in the new truck, smoke grass, camp, have fires, and work some more, Going to be such a busy year at work. đĽď¸
New cars đ
Oh, you want to buy a new car? Must be you love breathing in toxic chemicals that will give you cancer! It’s like throwing money into a fire, the depreciation is remarkable if you drive it off the lot and decide to sell it the next day. You’ll never get what you bought it for selling it used back to the dealer or even a third party. Obviously! Are you some kind of retard, a complete fool when it comes to money, somebody who wants to debt for the rest of his life and have a car payment at least until I pay off the bank in a week or so?
So the solution is the 20-year old Honda! Of course, because there are millions of gently used 20-year old Hondas out there, ready to deliver you to the mall and be perfect for running pizza deliveries to various people’s houses. 20-year old Hondas really are good for traveling in the city, where the worse thing that can happen is the car breaks down, you call a tow truck and take the bus home, and wait a few days for the mechanic to fix it up. Very economical. Of course, probably even more economical would be to call Gavin Welding and have them weld some plates on frame of Big Red and replace the bad cross members. And keep pushing that 5.3l down the road. He looks pretty sad sitting in the snow, as the rust just keeps further over his body as he sits in the field.
I decided to take a look a bit at used market, see what is being listed, particularly for big pickup trucks. The thing is pickup trucks generally get used, and not gently. Most people who buy trucks don’t lease – it’s actually pretty hard to lease a truck because dealerships don’t want to deal with banged up 3-year old trucks even if they can charge damages back to owners. The exception is might be a car rental agency like Enterprise Rent-a-Car or Hertz Car Rental, but they mostly rent sedans, SUVs, and small trucks for tourists and business travelers, not many HD trucks.
Then I realized what I was really should be looking at was not Hertz Car Rental but Herc Rentals which is a spin off of Hertz Car Rental, but leases trucks to commercial contractors. The thing is that Herc Rental vehicles get used commercially, and most have over 100,000 miles when they make it onto the used market on Herc Rentals used page. A hard 100,000 miles, as let’s be honest people in construction who drive leased company cars, probably don’t always let the engine warm up before hammering the gas, they slam the gear shifter into park, tow heavy loads, and drive a shit-ton of miles and leave the engine idling burning up the company’s gas as the lifters clunk away starved of oil from excessive idle. I mean how gentle are you with your companies’ equipment? Especially if you are burly construction worker with a bit of a temper working for a big boss man.
Another option is to buy a used car from a dealership or a lot. That is something I’m considering but options are limited especially with the big trucks. There are some werid configurations that never sell, and end up becoming loaner cars, and maybe that’s a way to save a few thousand dollars. The thing is with the auto quality today, often the trucks that don’t sell are infamous for bad transmissions or engines, the models any smart buyer would stay away from. Or that truck that was reposed for failure to pay. Do you think all maintance was preformed and driven gently with a repo? All for saving a few thousand dollars. Doesn’t strike me as worth it.
Reliability aside, I want to get a camper shell and other equipment for my new rig which can’t necessarily be transfered from truck to truck. It makes more sense to have a vehicle that will last for many years, and a reliable new vehicle will last longer then a used vehicle. The 10-speed Ford trannys are bad, but supposedly the latest model year has upgraded clutches which are more reliable. The 7.3L is said to be a real work horse, it like to drink gas on city streets, but is said to easily make 200,000 miles or more – with an asterisk about lifter issues in some commercial uses. But not like lifter issues in Chevy’s, and far less then other major makes that use “advanced” technologies like displacement on demand, supercharging, auto-stop shut-off. And I just really want a big truck without having to pay for a lift kit or deal with lift kit issues.
I know I am just trying to rationalize buying a new HD truck. I mean, I’m the one who is so frugal that I ride my bike to work avoid a $1.30 bus fare, lives in an apartment paying the County Welfare Department rate, and keep my heat at 47-50 degrees all winter exception when it’s exceptionally cold and refuse all subscriptions from internet to television to trash hauling. One who invests more then half of his six-figure income each year in stocks, bonds, and CDs. But I want to get a good rig that will last, with the most reliable power train avaliable, that best suits my needs. Probably for buyers of a 20-year old Honda, then it makes sense to buy used. If you only care that are car gets you to the mall or delivers pizzas out back, then that’s car for you. But I’ve worked for many years, built a career, invested and saved for many years, sacrificed many things for a nice truck that will serve me many years in wilderness, just like Big Red did.
