I am glad I own a TJ

One think I am noticing about comments about driving til the wheels fall off is that most/all are not in the rust belt...

I have wondered about the average age of vehicles on the road in the NE. I think I read the average tagged and insured vehicle in NC is 15 years old now, which I believe is reasonably accurate. '90s to mid 2000s vehicles are still very common daily drivers around here, and they're generally not clapped-out. Cars around here will die from high mileage and poor maintenance before rust has a chance to become a significant issue.
 
I have wondered about the average age of vehicles on the road in the NE. I think I read the average tagged and insured vehicle in NC is 15 years old now, which I believe is reasonably accurate. '90s to mid 2000s vehicles are still very common daily drivers around here, and they're generally not clapped-out. Cars around here will die from high mileage and poor maintenance before rust has a chance to become a significant issue.

Average age of my vehicles is 14 years old. I would say of people I know I am definitely minority, though there are plenty of people worse off driving older rusted out stuff.
 
Average age of my vehicles is 14 years old. I would say of people I know I am definitely minority, though there are plenty of people worse off driving older rusted out stuff.

The average age of my vehicles is 14.75. The only one I drive in the winter is the one with the aluminum body.
 
When all my friends were buying new cars I was buying houses. I bought the worst house on the block rehabbed it and rented it out. Rinse and repeat. I learned early on that it’s other people who make you money.

there was a time when that made a lot more sense, going forward I'd be far more concerned given the state of owning rentals vs. squatters vs. a government that's increasingly willing to waive rental payments on the owner's behalf with 'moratoriums', we saw many landlords get crushed by this during covid & the years since, certainly more a blue state scenario but with an ever increasingly omnipotent federal monarchy I wouldn't count on red state protections in that regard. Covid was the testing ground, look for 'climate crisis' rent moratoriums in theaters near you in the coming years...
 
he only one I drive in the winter is the one with the aluminum body.

How's that holding up? I've been seeing lots of aluminum hoods, mostly Fords, with significant corrosion. My MIL has a '16 Explorer and the front lip of the hood is looking bad. No visible holes, but clearly corrosion bubbling up paint.
 
How's that holding up? I've been seeing lots of aluminum hoods, mostly Fords, with significant corrosion. My MIL has a '16 Explorer and the front lip of the hood is looking bad. No visible holes, but clearly corrosion bubbling up paint.

I've not had any problems on mine. Ford has used Aluminum hoods since at least 2004 on their F150's.

My superduty is PPF'd too so that may help it.
 
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there was a time when that made a lot more sense, going forward I'd be far more concerned given the state of owning rentals vs. squatters vs. a government that's increasingly willing to waive rental payments on the owner's behalf with 'moratoriums', we saw many landlords get crushed by this during covid & the years since, certainly more a blue state scenario but with an ever increasingly omnipotent federal monarchy I wouldn't count on red state protections in that regard. Covid was the testing ground, look for 'climate crisis' rent moratoriums in theaters near you in the coming years...

I have not had to evict anyone in over 30 yrs. One of our first tenants was one of those pay first and last and never pay again then fight eviction for the next 6 months. Even bragged to my other tenants that it was what they do. We got them out in 2 months and I was able to seize a car and motorcycle from them to offset the coat. It was a great learning experience. I served one tenant, who skipped out on us in the middle of the night, at the church on their wedding day. I hope they think of me when they look at their wedding photos. Bottom line is that being a landlord is not for everyone. The wife handles the admin part and I do all the maintenance work. I only rent to people with good jobs who won’t quit when I garnish their wages. We had no issues with Covid. If you only see reasons not to do something then you end up with doing nothing. ALL self made people took chances. The ones who failed did not let it stop them from succeeding later on. I came to Ca in 1979 with $500 and my carpenter’s tools and through hard work, marrying the right woman and having the right friends I was able to become wealthy.
It’s not what I can’t do it’s what do I need to do.
 
100% agree with this. Not how much you make that's important, but how much you keep. That applies to investments and savings as well as income.


Most folk likely use less than half of the capabilities of the device they have before they upgrade to something new. Sad, but the manufacturers are expert at pigeon holing the consumer into having to upgrade. They add one service or feature only available if you upgrade to the newest version of whatever. And they make all the accessories purchased for the current version incompatible with the next version so you have retool everything.

I got sucked into the void on this. I am an Apple fan. The ecosystem is rock solid and having everything I need/want available via any device I pick up makes access incredibly easy. I was using a non-Apple subscription app called Evernote to compile and catalog a ton of stuff.. receipts, manuals, health info, home/auto/flood insurance, logs for all my Jeeps... There is a feature that allows you to link these notes to each other making things even easier to find. Over more than a decade of using Evernote, I was stuck paying for the monthly subscription and only using a tenth of the services I was paying for. Along comes Apple Notes. It offered just about all of the services I was using in Evernote and no monthly subscription but no ability to link the notes. My filing system was FUBAR without linking. Some time later the linking feature was added to Apple Notes. Finally I could ditch the monthly fee for Evernote. Wait.. the linking feature is only available on the newest models of Apple devices. Ah, upgrade time. Faster, more storage, better screen, note linking.. great. Oh, wait.. new devices use a USB C instead of Lightening charging cords.. Gotta upgrade that too. Can't have Notes linking on one device and then not on another, so I ended up with a new iMac, iPad Air, iPad mini and a MacBook just to have the notes linking.

It's complete manipulation of the consumer. Planned obsolescence.

Almost as bad as social media... watch The Social Dilemma

I totally understand. I've been running Macs since about 2005 or so - plus supported them in an IT position. The problem I noticed immediately is that if anything is older than about two years - sometimes less - Apple, and really the entire Apple ecosphere, companies who learned from Apple, want nothing to do with you. I once purchased a large Apple Cinema Display for one of my users who had a ONE YEAR OLD Mac pro. Thing wouldn't connect to it - I had to buy an expensive 3rd party adapter to get it to work. That's but one example - I've had the rug jerked out from under me so many times by Apple that I'm "done" with them.

Over on the Windows side, the one thing I'll say for Microsoft is that they historically have been VASTLY better in the area of backwards compatibility. Unlike Apple, who releases yearly OS updates that look like the previous 10 years, but break everything and are compatible with very little - scads of Windows programs can run on anything forward of Win 2K or XP. Hell, even up until fairly recently, I could run programs written for CP/M on a Windows box and they would run just fine without having to resort to DOSBox or similar emulation. But as I told people when asked, "I have the exact same agreement with both Apple and Microsoft, they keep doing stupid shit and I keep cussing at them." M$ keeps creating braindead adaptations of industry standards (something that goes all the way back to the original IBM PC), while Apple keeps doing stupidity that would get the laughed out of business if they were ANYBODY but Apple! But because they are "Apple", its a Good Thing (tm).

They both are dumbing down their respective ecosystems to the smartphone level. I'm done with both of them and will be returning to Linux after a 25 year absence "next time".

As for "The Social Dilemma", I'm familiar. The last "Social Media" site I had any involvement with was Tribe - that was before the term "Social Media" was invented. I didn't really see much sense in Tribe, just like I don't see much sense in facesuck, TWITter, instatwat, snapcat, dreads, what'sup etc, etc.
 
I served one tenant, who skipped out on us in the middle of the night, at the church on their wedding day. I hope they think of me when they look at their wedding photos.

Cold blooded, I like it. :cool: I've heard some great stories over the years. We might have to start a landlord thread for "tips and tricks".
 
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I have not had to evict anyone in over 30 yrs. One of our first tenants was one of those pay first and last and never pay again then fight eviction for the next 6 months. Even bragged to my other tenants that it was what they do. We got them out in 2 months and I was able to seize a car and motorcycle from them to offset the coat. It was a great learning experience. I served one tenant, who skipped out on us in the middle of the night, at the church on their wedding day. I hope they think of me when they look at their wedding photos. Bottom line is that being a landlord is not for everyone. The wife handles the admin part and I do all the maintenance work. I only rent to people with good jobs who won’t quit when I garnish their wages. We had no issues with Covid. If you only see reasons not to do something then you end up with doing nothing. ALL self made people took chances. The ones who failed did not let it stop them from succeeding later on. I came to Ca in 1979 with $500 and my carpenter’s tools and through hard work, marrying the right woman and having the right friends I was able to become wealthy.
It’s not what I can’t do it’s what do I need to do.

I don't think you read (or understood) what I wrote before getting upset and blurting all that out. Rentals were always great investments, I've owned them in the past and present. What I'm saying is that times are changing and not for the better, it may not be in the future what it was for you and others in the past. I could be wrong, have been before, but it seems to me that the US is heading in a direction where our individual property rights are not as important to the government as they once were, and if that's the case protection of owner's rights begins to fall down the food chain of importance in favor of tenants/squatters/criminals. Many parts of California literally told landlords to suck it for years post-2020 with their moratoriums on rent, owner's mortgage troubles weren't as pressing as tenants need to live for free on someone else's dime. That would have been unheard of 5, 10, 20 years ago, it's been heard of since 2020 however... Add to that the newer stories of squatters inviting themselves into anything that looks good, claiming they 'live there' & staying for months & sometimes longer while the owner has to follow the law to 'evict' them?

To aggravate the situation we now have a sudden influx of millions of homeless people dancing across the southern border and an economy where even people with jobs are priced out of the market & you've got a volatile situation on your hands going forward. Being a residential landlord has always had challenges and heartaches, I know them first hand, these newer phenomena just make it more difficult is all I'm saying.
 
I agree the country is turning into a Shit Show. There’s not much I can do about it but adapt. People wanted the minimum wage raised so people with no skills can make $40K a year and then bitch when prices are raised. People will not work without getting paid but they think a business owner should. Unskilled jobs should pay less than jobs that require learning skills or a higher education. Where’s the incentive for these to improve themselves? Our discussion boils down to people wanting it all while making no effort to work to get it. Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet put in long hours for years to get where they are today. Today people want a 4 day work week and work from home.
 
....I don't see much sense in facesuck, TWITter, instatwat, snapcat, dreads, what'sup etc, etc.
I have zero interest in any of these apps. Felt that way prior to the documentary, but that sealed it for me. My 21 year old daughter is entrenched in all of them. So much so that making a phone call to someone is considered "weird". I look at her and shudder thinking what they are inflicting on her brain.

Only exception for me is Marketplace and that's on a thin ice right now.
 
I'm sure they're out there, but I don't know anyone under 60 who hits all three of these. :confused:

hahaha yea, I should probably clarify, not saying you should look like you just climbed out of a dumpster & drive a Beverly Hillbilly-mobile, though my ex-wife frequently accused me of looking like a homeless person. I've driven econo-cruisers mostly my entire life, they don't stick out, and I have a congenital aversion to 'nice' clothes, jewelry, watches and so forth. House is relatively modest. All by choice, no interest in upgrading anything about my life, none of it would add any value to my existence & only serve to separate me from dollars that are better off where they are.

A good friend was recently robbed while away on vacation, the list of stuff taken could choke a horse; I knew he had really expensive shit but no idea the quantity, I can't tell one multi-thousand dollar watch from another, but the criminal was in & out in minutes & separated my buddy from a staggering dollar value of stuff. I laughed to myself thinking how pissed this guy would be breaking into my house, I've got nothing of value on the open market, nothing worth carrying out the door anyway. Actually the TJ is probably the most valuable piece of personal property I own, it may be worth 10k on a good day, less than one of the watches my buddy lost. After that the value of other shit goes off a cliff.

I agree the country is turning into a Shit Show. There’s not much I can do about it but adapt. People wanted the minimum wage raised so people with no skills can make $40K a year and then bitch when prices are raised. People will not work without getting paid but they think a business owner should. Unskilled jobs should pay less than jobs that require learning skills or a higher education. Where’s the incentive for these to improve themselves? Our discussion boils down to people wanting it all while making no effort to work to get it. Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet put in long hours for years to get where they are today. Today people want a 4 day work week and work from home.

The blame for practically every aspect of this shit show we find ourselves in can be laid directly at the feet of Obama. I'll give the guy credit for having integrity, he promised to 'fundamentally change America' and he kept that promise. We're coming to the end of what amounts to his third term, God help us if he gets a fourth.
 
In reality what's happened to Jeep is what is happening at practically every large company in the US. It comes down to profits and shareholders. The profits must continue to go up and the shareholders must always make more money. Have a bad quarter, replace the CEO, but not before he gets millions in severance. New guy comes in and takes care of the shareholders by cutting corners and screwing the consumer. Rinse and repeat. And they know they can keep doing it because they will never fail and the gov will always bail them out. Even if the gov would stop the bailouts, all the higher ups and shareholders will still make out because they will short the company in the stock market as its going down.

This is pretty much the whole scenario going on with Gamestop the other year and currently now. They gutted the company from the inside and shorted it knowing it was going to fail. And then people figured it out. And then the gov stepped in and saved the them again.

Both of these are great at showing what is actually happening throughout our economy.




Back to current conversations, excluding my 1971 chevelle the average age of my vehicles is 13.75, which includes a new vehicle that my wife drives. My jeep is 18 and my daily Acura is 22. With that being said I will probably never buy a new jeep ever. My next vehicle will be a certified preowned Lexus.

Not sure why the links aren't working but if you click on them it opens up the video.
 
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