07-08-2020, 07:55 PM
Shew, that's a lot Jake. It puts things into perspective though, I always wondered how you guys in NOVA had so much cool stuff coming out of undergrad. I was sitting here with a house and a beat up XJ going, I WANT THAT TOO. So, I bought an FRS I couldn't afford and tried to keep up with Jones (even though those Jones were 2 hours away).
See, I bought a house when I was 22 and still in college and while I always had housemates helping with the mortgage, maintenance had been a large suck on my finances. I think I discount how much of a drain it is because everything I've repaired has been a necessity. I probably could have had some cooler cars through my 20's if I didn't buy my house, but overall my positive equity in my home has been better overall for my financial health then probably having a revolving door of vehicles. It's just more boring. I'm not a do it yourselfer, I don't really care about lawn maintenance. It was just a good investment at the time with 0 real excitement behind it.
I can kind of trace some of my hesitation on getting a fast, fun car again back to my GTO experience and just how much of an absolute shit show that was for me (mostly caused by my ignorance). My motor blew up from a known issue on the LS2, the third party warranty company claimed it was my fault and denied my claim AFTER THE MOTOR WAS APART AT THE DEALERSHIP. Picking up a car in pieces, after getting shafted by a shady company and being able to do nothing about it is a sobering experience. For basically 2 years, I paid monthly payments on a car with no motor in it, in my driveway AND THEN had to pay someone to rebuild the motor, drop it in with the help of a local mechanic and try to sell it just to get myself out the money pit. I basically had the entire value of the car in maintenance and repairs billed to a credit card at like 12% interest, plus the car payment itself. Absolutely brutal and the biggest drain on my finances in the last 8 years. I wish I could justify getting a cool s2000, e46 M3, or an M5 or an older Porsche or something, but after that experience, I kinda figured I'd need a lot more cash or get something pretty damn nice and CPO'd to be willing to get back into car stuff again. But, the first rule of racing is don't track what you can't afford to crash so even if I did get something nice, I'd be hard-parking for days and it wouldn't serve the purpose for why it was built.
Now though, I think I'll get something more track/autox oriented (car or bike, I'm not sure) next year and try to pay cash for it, and it'll be cheap. Like under 5k cheap. You can get a well prepped track bike for like 3k and I already have a trailer which makes it easy. I'll maybe siphon off a small percentage of income to do fund my motorsports stuff after I hit my other goals closer to the end of this year and create a "fun account" so I can keep my budget a little bit exciting. Strict personal finance always feels like this funeral dirge to retirement and I need a little bit of space in the budget to do some fun stuff. I'm struggling with how much to allocate to that but it sound like to participate in motorsports in any real racing sort of way, it would be a huge drain. I'm not going to do that. I just want to learn to drive better and have a space to make mistakes. I'll take another look once I get out of my student loans.
This conversation has been good in kind of figuring out how you guys have managed to do this stuff, but bottom line is that I'm generally more risk-averse financially and that's sort of what has been my biggest mental road-block. And, I have a home and have had one for the majority of my "wealth building" early years. I should also probably get treatment for adhd
. Thanks for the feedback, everyone.
See, I bought a house when I was 22 and still in college and while I always had housemates helping with the mortgage, maintenance had been a large suck on my finances. I think I discount how much of a drain it is because everything I've repaired has been a necessity. I probably could have had some cooler cars through my 20's if I didn't buy my house, but overall my positive equity in my home has been better overall for my financial health then probably having a revolving door of vehicles. It's just more boring. I'm not a do it yourselfer, I don't really care about lawn maintenance. It was just a good investment at the time with 0 real excitement behind it.
I can kind of trace some of my hesitation on getting a fast, fun car again back to my GTO experience and just how much of an absolute shit show that was for me (mostly caused by my ignorance). My motor blew up from a known issue on the LS2, the third party warranty company claimed it was my fault and denied my claim AFTER THE MOTOR WAS APART AT THE DEALERSHIP. Picking up a car in pieces, after getting shafted by a shady company and being able to do nothing about it is a sobering experience. For basically 2 years, I paid monthly payments on a car with no motor in it, in my driveway AND THEN had to pay someone to rebuild the motor, drop it in with the help of a local mechanic and try to sell it just to get myself out the money pit. I basically had the entire value of the car in maintenance and repairs billed to a credit card at like 12% interest, plus the car payment itself. Absolutely brutal and the biggest drain on my finances in the last 8 years. I wish I could justify getting a cool s2000, e46 M3, or an M5 or an older Porsche or something, but after that experience, I kinda figured I'd need a lot more cash or get something pretty damn nice and CPO'd to be willing to get back into car stuff again. But, the first rule of racing is don't track what you can't afford to crash so even if I did get something nice, I'd be hard-parking for days and it wouldn't serve the purpose for why it was built.
Now though, I think I'll get something more track/autox oriented (car or bike, I'm not sure) next year and try to pay cash for it, and it'll be cheap. Like under 5k cheap. You can get a well prepped track bike for like 3k and I already have a trailer which makes it easy. I'll maybe siphon off a small percentage of income to do fund my motorsports stuff after I hit my other goals closer to the end of this year and create a "fun account" so I can keep my budget a little bit exciting. Strict personal finance always feels like this funeral dirge to retirement and I need a little bit of space in the budget to do some fun stuff. I'm struggling with how much to allocate to that but it sound like to participate in motorsports in any real racing sort of way, it would be a huge drain. I'm not going to do that. I just want to learn to drive better and have a space to make mistakes. I'll take another look once I get out of my student loans.
This conversation has been good in kind of figuring out how you guys have managed to do this stuff, but bottom line is that I'm generally more risk-averse financially and that's sort of what has been my biggest mental road-block. And, I have a home and have had one for the majority of my "wealth building" early years. I should also probably get treatment for adhd
. Thanks for the feedback, everyone.
2008 4Runner
1974 CB360
2015 FJ09
1974 CB360
2015 FJ09