I haven’t had an opportunity to sit down for reading and writing lately, even when I thought I would sooner. My Google Doc list of topics has been ever increasing. Even though it’s about a month old, I figure for the record, here we go.

But two big pieces of news.

There is much in the realm of what to discuss. My wife went to Boise last month to work out in Idaho and became a pipefitter traveler! More on how that’s gone soon. It is with mixed emotions that I am happy for her. It is within a day’s drive, and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

The good news? The per diem and overtime are already providing significant income in a short period of time to pay off debt, and have her graduate from her apprenticeship on time rather than be out of work. Also, Boise has good food, and some good music, and some nice outdoor activities to do. Not all are rednecks and potato farms out in Idaho. Some are “libahoans,” a contractive noun I made up for liberal Idahoans that I didn’t find after a Google search. She found an apartment with a 6 month lease, similar to the one we used to live in in Portland.

The bad news? Well… being far away. I love a nice road trip, but I’ll be headed out to Idaho by car very often as round trip flights often approach $500, thanks to the current U.S. president picking fights with the Ayatollah (what was that again, about sleepy Joe Biden being responsible for gas prices to go up in our centrally planned, socialist economy?) I’m sure once in a while I’ll do the hour flight instead of the 8 hour drive. I’m sure oftentimes I’ll go the long way through Bend to stop at Spork for some amazing food!

The second big piece of news? We have a new, lightly used Prius now! The old 2017 Nissan Versa we had got totaled by the other drivers' insurance company after getting rear ended and suffering frame damage… after we just bought front brakes for it. My wife also suffered some whiplash but is slowly getting better, so hopefully the injury payout will be fair and generous. Unfortunate timing with the car though! But they gave us more money for it than the top end of Kelley Blue Book’s estimate, especially given its condition (although I don’t trust Kelley Blue Book for shit, as they apparently don’t factor in regional factors to their values, which is stupid and pathetic). So the old Nissan repairs probably ended up being a wash. Also, looks can be deceiving! The rear bumper didn’t look that bad cosmetically, but the frame damage was serious and would have cost almost what the car is worth to fix. But apparently even if it’s close at all, the insurance company will simply total it.

Fast forward to car buying: I have never had as inconvenient, and frustrating of a car buying experience as recently with getting my wife a reliable Toyota Prius. The car market is absolute shit right now, all worsened by the high gas prices, which is really frustrating.

Anyways, we were originally going to buy a Prius for under $7,000 in cash, but it was nearly impossible to get anything under 160,000 miles with a rebuilt title and a time bomb of hybrid battery, head gasket or big ticket maintenance issues. Private party sellers were often flippers, who refused pre-purchase inspections, refused to negotiate on unreasonably high prices, with incomplete maintenance records that you’d expect. I’m sorry but I saw asks north of $8,000 for 20 year old, beater Priuses that didn’t even have clean titles! I mean, get the actual fuck out of here! Small car dealers were often similar at that price point and very slimy. So these people would rather not sell a car than make some concessions? It was crazy!

So, we reluctantly decided to take out a loan and go with CarMax since they had a 10 day money back return policy. That 10 day policy is the ONLY thing good about CarMax, and otherwise I’ll put them in the same category as TicketMaster. The people were friendly, and supposedly they had the car well taken care of and inspected before sale–supposedly. Except I took the car to Les Schwab for their free safety check, only to find there were issues with alignment, leaky rear struts, and wheel bearings at $1,400 to fix. Um, excuse me? After dropping $17K on a 9 year old car with 124K miles, that was supposed to be fixed, and you can’t even reassure me that it’ll be fixed? I was even gaslit about Les Schwab upselling and how cheap it is to fix these. Uh… no. These were immediate needs to fix, not a “someday” item.

Going forward, if anyone tries to tell me that an independent inspection upsold me, or downplay how much repairs are… then they’ve lost my business right then and there. After all if the repairs were so fucking cheap, then why didn’t they do them, since national dealers have economies of scale and don’t pay consumer repair rate markups?

Then to add insult to injury, not only did CarMax take our down payment instantly electronically, but of course, they could only refund it via mailed paper check. Then as if it couldn’t get any worse, I found out they cherry picked the worst credit bureau score of both my wife and I and ran with it to offer a criminally high 9.24% interest rate, juxtaposed with OnPoint who we later went with, who offered 5.24%. So our monthly payment was only slightly higher with a car that cost $25K instead of $17K, with 17K miles instead of 124K miles in far better condition. Fuck CarMax. I will never support them ever. Please steer clear from them, even for newer vehicles.

Also, fuck buying used cars. I think conventional wisdom about car buying and depreciation is largely obsolete now. Even after a year or two, there’s barely any benefit of depreciation anymore. When I’m financially able, I’ll likely buy a plug-in hybrid or all EV all wheel drive compact SUV new off the lot and take excellent care of it. I mean, the elimination of the risk premium is worth as much or more than the brief depreciation!

This situation was such a headache, I was almost tempted to look into leasing a new vehicle if the payment was low enough, and the buyback was reasonably priced, which is saying something, given how much I value vehicular equity. But leasing is even dumber now than it used to be as payments are often $400+ per month with a down payment and zero equity! Are you fucking kidding me? How are so many consumers willing to accept such bullshit? Where is the ceiling on the car market? Are that many people really willing to pay $700/month or more for 84 months at double digit interest rates just to look cool and have an $80,000 truck? Why the fuck are new trucks $80K in the first place, if they aren’t fucking Rivians or cutting edge plug-in hybrid or EV tech in pickups? It’s just absolute insanity to me. My car shopping has always been very utilitarian and practical, but 2026 is next level.

Anyways, lesson learned. Next time, we will get pre-approved at OnPoint or another credit union, and go straight to a super highly rated dealer, 4.9 stars or above from millions of raving reviews. I have never been more grateful to still be driving my paid off 2015 Mazda 3, which I’ve maintained well, and it still sounds and drives great. At this rate, I’d even be money ahead to fix cosmetic defects like new, paint it, wax it, detail it over ever getting something today.

That said, I’m glad we finally got a well-maintained, very lightly used Prius. Our final experience at Powell Motors was excellent, with a full file provided, including dealer activity. It has 17K miles and will probably last us at least 20 years, when we are in our early 50s and hopefully close to retirement. Car values stay so high nowadays, that our car payment feels more like a mortgage that we’re paying very slowly depreciating equity into. Wild!

Pictured below, a red 2017 Prius Four Touring, and the Welcome to Idaho sign on I-84 just east of the Snake River border.