So glad we don’t need a car…
 

Yikes. Flippin’ thru the paper today at car ads. Saw the Subaru dealer. USED. Subaru’s with 10-15,000 miles mid $30s to one for $44,000. I choke up seeing ads as these.

Our 5 year old Mercedes with 30K miles will no doubt last our lifetimes. It had better with this crazy market. I’ve heard of many folks selling their 2-3 year old car for more than they bought it for new. It’s NUTS.

Yep. Add the (ever-rising) cost of gasoline to that and the cost per mile becomes way too high.

Our golf cart can get us anywhere in TV that we need to go. We rarely use the Rav4 but we're keeping it. Who knows how much it will be worth in the next year or two?

Yes, it is not a good time to purchase almost anything. We plan on keeping our 11 year old Jag and 12 year old Lexus. But are in good condition and run fine. Was hoping to replace them with a Tesla, but that is on hold.

Sadly, inflation seldom reverts back to the previous lows, but does retreat some. So, we plan to just sit tight and wait for lower prices before making any large purchases. If things just continued to spiral down the drain, we have plans in place to immigrate to Ecuador. It is beautiful, extremely friendly, excellent healthcare, welcoming, and silly low cost of living.

Example, 5 acres mature orchids, 4 bedroom home with maid and gardener for $500 to $750 per month. 100% coverage healthcare is around $100/mth covers dental, optical, and healthcare. Eating out at a good Ecuador restaurant for 2 will run about $10 to $20. And on and on. Note: If you want to live with other American's (there are around 15,000 there) the costs are higher - but, all your favorite restaurants (and high prices) are in those areas.

We just made the decision to replace lots of stuff that typically goes with age in the 2005 BMW convertible since it only has 75,000 miles on it. Hopefully it will now last a loooooong time so we don’t have to overpay for a new vehicle that is littered with a bunch of computerized sensors and chips waiting to go bad.

We have a 2009 BMW convertible that we took in for work this week. The car has 108,00 miles and we are going to keep the car.

My wife absolutely refuses to get rid of her 2004 Camry. over 200k miles. It just keeps going and going. It has Toyota's legendary 6 cyl engine from that era. its a little banged up but that's a big advantage in parking lots. We could care less if someone dings it with their car door or whatever. Need to run it into the city? No problem.
On the other hand I bought a Ram 1500 4x4 new in 2015. I baby the hell out of it, park it where no man has gone before and it still gets dinged and I don't know how many times I yelled "HOW THE F%&$ DID THAT HAPPEN!"
So as Harry Belafonte sang "De woman is smarter in every way"

Yep, "excellent" healthcare. Note that all over the world royalty, heads of state and billionaires are no longer heading to Boston or NY when ill, they are now flocking to Ecuador:1rotfl::1rotfl::1rotfl: Get real.

Waiting for world to go back to what we consider is normal.

My '99 Miata will last lots longer than me, as will my '01 Tundra.

I'm sorry to say that normal is not coming back. Brace yourselves. We are in for rough time.

Sadly, I kind of agree with you. I have been saying we are about to have a major reset. My wife calls me mister gloom and doom.

"One of the great perks for foreign residents living in Ecuador is high-quality, low-cost healthcare. Bloomberg recently rated Ecuador as having the 20th most efficient healthcare system among advanced economies, while the U.S. ranked near the bottom in 46th place.

An internet comparison of healthcare costs from around the world found that Ecuador’s costs are the lowest—lower than those in China, Malaysia, India, Mexico, and Panama. In general, you can expect to pay 10% to 25% of what you would in the U.S. For major surgery, we’ve seen a number of cases in which costs were even less than 10% of comparable procedures in the U.S. You will find similar savings for dental care." (International Living dot com)

From what I was able to ascertain by clicking around, Ecuadorian health care is best in the larger cities, spottier in more distant rural areas. also it is two-tier: best in private hospitals and clinics, acceptable (not great) in public facilities. In this respect Ecuador is not unlike Thailand, which also has a two-tier system but which works a bit differently. The Thai government will pay to send promising students to Med school with the understanding that upon graduation they will work for the government in assigned areas providing health care for "x" number of years. They're free to establish business on the side and many do. It is a system that brings extremely affordable and competent health care to more isolated areas. I don't know if Ecuador does this or not but it certainly is possible.

All in all I'd have no qualms living in Ecuador considering what I was able to read about the quality of their health care. There are other considerations of course as well: corrupt judiciary, human-rights issues, and South America is not exactly known for political stability, but their health care is definitely a positive.

Good luck on your adventure..

I agree about a major reset, you have to read between the lines, it's coming, people who don't believe it better get their heads out of the sand. How about all the food factories catching fire, our food supply is under attack. Heck they are predicting food shortages, it's all by design.

Beware bogus "rankings" from bogus sources---looks like Bloomberg has signed on with the World Socialist Health Organization to use distorted statistics and irrelevant categories to promote their socialized medicine failing agenda. They use slanted ifant mortality statistics, which naturally then translate into slanted life expectancy numbers. Then they add crap like access to care and overly emphasize cost to make the US look bad. All this while comparing our country of 330 million to places that have a total population of less than a medium sized city. Remember, this is the same WHO that refused to acknowledge that COVID originated in China, and wants to change the name of monkeypox because it is "demeaning to Africa"---how "woke" of them. Personally, I would "defund" the WHO and kick them to the curb.

Again, if healthcare is so wonderful in Ecuador, skip your doctor here and flock there with everyone else:1rotfl::1rotfl::1rotfl: