We all make our own choices and live with the consequences. Enjoy your trip.I love seeing all the opinions. lol. Man.
It's great to see people making assumptions about me ("you make bad decisions", etc.,). I guess it's easy to do when all you see is a snapshot on here - I do come here sometimes to *****, I understand that - people don't see everything, and sometimes this is my place to vent, commiserate, etc.
We are enjoying our trip immensely. I am very pleased with our rental vehicle, it really has made things much more comfortable for us. It's clean, reliable, quiet, smooth, everything works as it should, it's truly wonderful.
But no, I'm not ready to jump out and spend $80k on a new truck. Hell, even if I wanted to, I don't think there're many on the lots. And buying BRAND new is usually a bad idea anyways due to the immediate depreciation. Although the current market has turned some of that on its head, I still think the principle applies.
As for Dave Ramsey telling me not to buy anything or go on any vacations while I'm still in debt - hey dude, come live in my shoes for a while. The debt I have isn't going away anytime soon, and I'm not going to spend years workings without ever doing anything nice for my family or for myself - that's a ticket to eating a bullet, I'm sorry. Some of you may be fine with warm beer and bread, but I work to live, and that's that.
I may have debt, but it's mostly not bad debt like credit cards and such. I have student loans - which enabled me to achieve a very high level of education which led to my current job field. I have business debt, which again, led me into my current business. Without taking on that debt, I would still be someone's hourly employee. We have no vehicle debt to this point, I paid off the last car note, which was a 5 year note, back in... I think 2018. Still own that car. Our three vehicles are 2004, 2007 and 2009. I'm not in a revolving door of upside-down car notes. Ditto with homes. Our home is very modest and about 44 years old, we have made lot of improvements and the value is a good bit more than we paid for it - if we were looking at selling it, which we're not.
So anyways, like I said - this was more of a 'venting' thread. I do have to figure out what to do with my daily driver, but I won't be getting rid of it. It should be reliable from a powertrain standpoint, but there are tons of other things that can leave you stranded, for sure.
I'm enjoying my rental (and yes, we've considered renting for big trips from now on), and the family and I are having a great time.
For the moment, I need to get showered and load up the family to go rafting on the Rio Grande this morning.
Ciao!
I put 356,000 on my 95 Tacoma before selling it to the first person that looked at it. He put another 60K on it before being offered $6 K for it earlier this year so he sold it. The only thing done to it was a new starter when it was at 10K miles, and a timing belt at 200K. The old timing belt looked like it was new.
My wife thought the same until I made her drive one. Now she won’t go back to anything smaller than a pickup.Yup. I think renting this vehicle has certainly been an eye opener for me. I honestly doubt I'll be buying a new Tahoe like this for ME... I'd probably prefer to keep mine and get something nicer for my WIFE, since we're likely going to give her Escape to my son when he turns 16.
She probably won't want something that big, though. For one, it likely won't fit in our garage, and she doesn't like driving really big vehicles.
So... I dunno. We can get buy with a 'mid-size' SUV on trips and such, but it isn't nearly as comfortable. We travel heavy, I guess you'd say. lol. And having room for this infernal dog we picked up a couple years ago really makes it tighter - she's gotta have room to lay down and stretch out on a long trip.
Anyways, not gonna do anything about it today, or this week, or whatever.
Yesterday, rafting on the Rio Grande was awesome.
Today, it's 4x4s from Red River up to Goose Lake in the mountains. I can't wait.
I really needed this trip to recharge my batteries. We like going to the beach and to visit my wife's family, but just wearing a mask in the stores irritates me these days, having to wear one of those face diapers on an airplane for hours isn't something I want to think about - not to mention the "6-foot" Nazis while you're standing in lines so you can crowd in like sardines on planes or other transportation. Screw that.
This has been a good trip so far, and we've got 5 more days till we head home on Saturday. W00T!
Oh, and BTW, standing on the bridge over the Rio Grande Gorge made me physically sick - I felt like I was going to throw up for hours afterwards.... I dunno about this whole Royal Gorge thing, now. <sigh>
