idk, that's not a real huge sample of fix small coolant problem/here comes big coolant problem 5 minutes later imo.

You drive cars everyday and at the end of your lifetime a huge % of your money spent will be on cars.

It might be a worthwhile investment to learn a thing or two about them.

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Yeah I was going to ask the forum again for help so this can serve as my prompt. Not sure I want to spent 75-100k on a car but the Tesla seems awesome.

Ok guys. Driving a BMW 545 for about 10 years now. Car has 92k miles and is likely worth about 12-15k. I have put 3k in this year alone for repairs and feel like my plan last year of drive it until it dies may be bad since the repairs are costly.

So what should I get? I prefer 4 doors and being able to carry 4 passangers is mandatory. At least 6 cylinder and preferably 8. (or none) Maybe ready for more comfort than the 5 series and slightly less performance. Would like to keep it 50-70k range but less or a little more could be ok if I like the car.

As an aside, how about lease vs buy?

It isnt. The savings from spotting a problem won't come anywhere close to the hourly I earn doing what I do well.

When I moved to NM quite a few years ago I bought a 67 Chevy pickup (in Northern NM in those days a pickup, ideally with a gun rack on the back of the cab was de rigueur), and I worked on it myself quite a bit - it was a pretty simple straight 6 engine layout and fairly easy to see what's what when you opened the hood. Any car I've had in the last ten years is very different - open the hood and it's hard to find the receptacles for adding oil or windshield washer (or tell the difference between them) .

Plus as surf doc says - from an opportunity cost perspective it does not make sense to do the work yourself if you will take you 5 hours to do something that someone can do in one hour for much less hourly than you make in your real job (either poker or real world) - for me it's the same for a lot of things I could conceivably do myself - it makes more sense to me to hire someone who knows what they are doing.

Of course in this case it's not clear they knew what they were doing (or maybe were not paying attention when they reconnected the hoses).

I have never taken any shop class, auto class, or anything mechanical whatsoever so saying something is a simple straight 6 is pretty lol for me. I would not get anything done in any amount of hours working on a car other than to make things way worse. In general when I pick up my car from a repair I just look them in the eye and nod a lot the way you would if pretending to understand someone speaking chinese. They might was well be.

The only time they didn't know what they were doing was when they tried to explain that 2 things were unrelated when the chance of them being unrelated was roughly .001%

The idea of paying someone 1/4 of your earned hourly to do something for you is a concept my wife and I still can't come to grips with. She is a high income earner and I see her in the laundry room for 30 minutes when I want to watch Sons of Anarchy. There are a bunch of other things that could be delegated out as well but I seem to have lost this battle. I don't get the distinction how the deep cleaning like showers and toilets is worth hiring help for, but me doing grocery shopping, cooking, or kid related driving 2-4 hours a week isn't.

You would not have needed shop class to deal with that old Chevy engine, everything was pretty obvious. But I have the same problem with my wife - whenever we know visitors are coming we have to do a thorough house cleaning, and hiring help is absolutely vetoed. Even though we have plenty of income and even though it would not even be one small pot lost and I'm glad to pay for it. It just violates her principles somehow.

big lebowski is obv GOAT funny movie.....this just goes without saying MAN

This little girl is the daughter of someone I work with. I think this is pretty good for life perspective. If you are running bad, watch this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S96746O27c0

Yep. I've spent the last 20 years working with developing countries on health systems. First place I ever worked was Sierra Leone (well before the violence). I went around to every hospital in the country and there were basically no medicines available in them. The Central Medical Stores had a few tins of aspirin and a ton of expired antipsychotics. A recent shipment of UNICEF medicines had vanished from the port (and the Chief Pharmacist had a new Mercedes). And these are the health systems that are now trying to cope with Ebola.

A bad beat that costs you a buyin is not close to this girl's experience or growing up in a place where you basically have no shot.

On a lighter note - congratulations surf doc - the Chargers are apparently the beast of the west.

Draft kings seems like the stones.