Funny - IS300s are so expensive. I actually wanted one when I was shopping for E46s, but it made no sense given that you could find a dozen cheaper E46s that were infinitely cleaner for every beat up IS300 you could find. 

Good to hear that from a local, was our thinking as well. It’s more expensive than where we’re coming from and we’ll have to pony up some savings to get a smaller house...but it will still be a safe investment (not that we’re looking at it as a potential cash cow). 

Yeah love the 2001 series. He was a bit of a mixed bag - great writer, and showed a lot of love for the country. But also had some hush hush “plays with little kids” rumors around him, which honestly to this day I have no idea if they were true or not.

Weak, scared little coastal elites...whose towns are also full of CRIME that you can’t walk down the street without being murdered. By lazy drug dealing do nothing illegals...who somehow managed to get off their butts and steal hardworking American jobs (as drug runners?).

Looking at Cargurus, it might be hard to find a decent manual in the sub $5K range but if that can be stretched another thousand or two, there will be a few decent options.

Seems like you have some flexibility in figuring out where you want to go - that’s great. Yeah if it wasn’t the distance (from ANYWHERE) I would seriously consider New Zealand too. Given how unpredictable everything is with COVID right now renting and watching is probably a good move on your part! 

Exactly. And I usually admit I have a car addiction - we’ve lived in our house for 5 years and had 6 cars go through our garage during that time - to be fair, 2 cheap old BMWs and 2 EV leases that were cheaper than what I would be paying for gas otherwise).

Not very familiar with these at all, but what about an old Volvo wagon (or sedan, I guess)? Maybe an 850 so it’s not too too old?

That particular car is a ZHP...good luck finding one that’s not completely beat to death for under $5k. But agreed on the E46 in general - it’s a great bargain out there, plenty to be had for the same price as a Japanese econobox of the same vintage.

That’s exactly what we’re doing...feel weird throwing money at rent for an apartment that is a grand more expensive than our current mortgage - but in the long term it will be worth it in getting to know neighborhoods, taking our time finding a place, etc.

I did think about leasing - and that’s a fair point. But maybe to many buying out your current lease might still be a better choice than current market prices? I’ve known several people who’ve done that and cashed out on the positive equity they’ve gained because they just didn’t need another car. So for those that do…

Exactly this - people wax poetic about market forces, but ignore the bit about information imbalance. When a large portion of the public and politicians they support are acting (or being paid to act, in the case of the latter?) as if this is purely just a choice between two different forms of white bread, instead of a…

We are listing in about a month as well - hear the market out here at least is calming down just a little bit (meaning instead of 20 offers within 3 days, you get 5 offers within a week) out here in PDX. But what I’m not looking forward to is being on the other side of the situation over the coming months trying to…

Plus, my question is - are this many people truly in dire need for a car? It’s pretty wild what the car market is doing right now - I would imagine most people have a car of some sort they are replacing...friggin stick with it for as long as possible until this madness calms down (and maybe that’s good advice in…

Saw the article headline and thought it was going to be about my motherland I grew up in - Sri Lanka (I’ve lived in the US since, for more than half my life). Quite the economic disaster unwinding there right now (inflation through the roof, gov’t unable to service its debt) with the country being buried in Chinese…

But is there an easy way to change all the words to CAPS LOCK? At least getting the weird fonts in an unusual strange of orange is an easy fix.

Why don’t we just bring back bracero again and make it more widely eligible? Oh right, we’d rather be able to paint these people as criminals for political gain instead of necessary and hugely important members of our workforce and communities. 

Probably around the same time as Uber, maybe a tiny bit later? 

Interesting piece on Slate yesterday about Amazon and their Whole Foods purchase along the lines of what you’re saying -

Along those same lines - you’d also think that police departments would be some of the most pro-gun safety groups out there, given that their employees are directly being put in danger as a result of lax interpretations of the 2nd amendment...yet instead they are in lock step with whatever garbage the NRA keeps…