The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Matter of Facts: The Buy Nothing Rebellion

Episode Date: December 8, 2025

http://www.mofpodcast.com/http://www.pbnfamily.comhttps://www.facebook.com/matteroffactspodcast/https://www.facebook.com/groups/mofpodcastgroup/https://rumble.com/user/Mofpodcastwww.youtube.com/user/philrabhttps://www.instagram.com/mofpodcasthttps://twitter.com/themofpodcasthttps://www.cypresssurvivalist.org/Support the showMerch at: https://southerngalscrafts.myshopify.com/Shop at Amazon: http://amzn.to/2ora9riPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/mofpodcastPurchase American Insurgent by Phil Rabalais: https://amzn.to/2FvSLMLShop at MantisX: http://www.mantisx.com/ref?id=173*The views and opinions of guests do not reflect the opinions of Phil Rabalais, Andrew Bobo, Nic Emricson, or the Matter of Facts Podcast*To celebrate Black Friday, the boys chat through a phenomena known as “The Buy Nothing Rebellion”. Is this a full throated middle finger to the culture of consumerism, or an organic reaction to escalating costs of living and stagnant wages? Matter of Facts is now live-streaming our podcast on our YouTube channel, Facebook page, and Rumble at 7:30 PM Central on Thursdays . See the links above, join in the live chat, and see the faces behind the voices. Intro and Outro Music by Phil Rabalais All rights reserved, no commercial or non-commercial use without permission of creator prepper, prep, preparedness, prepared, emergency, survival, survive, self defense, 2nd amendment, 2a, gun rights, constitution, individual rights, train like you fight, firearms training, medical training, matter of facts podcast, mof podcast, reloading, handloading, ammo, ammunition, bullets, magazines, ar-15, ak-47, cz 75, cz, cz scorpion, bugout, bugout bag, get home bag, military, tactical Get Prepared with Our Incredible Sponsors! Survival Bags, kits, gear www.limatangosurvival.comEMP Proof Shipping Containers www.fardaycontainers.comThe Prepper's Medical Handbook Build Your Medical Cache – Welcome PBN FamilyPack Fresh USA www.packfreshusa.comSupport PBN with a Donation https://bit.ly/3SICxEq

Welcome back to the Matterfax podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping guns and politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at MOFpodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host Phil Ravley, Andrew and Nick are on the other side of the mic, and here's your show. So, welcome back in Matterfax podcast. Apparently, I forgot that I had to re-engage the intro song. Right.

I was waiting for that as well. Yeah, because the last time I did this, you know, I had it all set up for us to record Thanksgiving wishes. And apparently I forgot to turn it back on. Boo. It's fine. Mostly professional. Not that professional. But, you know, I can.

matter of fact you can nick you can entertain everybody for just a brief moment and i'll turn this stuff back on right now before i forget about it oh that's actually probably a very wise idea as you guys can see behind me and probably from our thanksgiving recording don't know if that had video i moved my gun safe holy christ was that thing heavy even without the guns in it even when i took the doors off ended up using the old grab the uh bunch of three-quarter inch round downstock. I ended up shoving that under the safe to roll that, to push that across the floor. Fantastic heavy equipment or machinery or general heavy stuff moving technique right there. Probably likely also what built the pyramids, believe it or not. Rolling stuff on wooden

logs. In this case, steel logs, but are we sure it wasn't aliens? I am certain it was not aliens regardless of what the man with the hair has to say about it i just you know i oh that that man became a meme in one hairdo it was he he did i mean it was an amusing show don't get me wrong especially if you played the drinking game version where every time they blamed something on aliens you drank that sounds like alcohol poisoning with extra steps it didn't take that many steps the episode was only like 25 minutes yeah all right well let's do admin work now that i've unscrewed the first batch of admin work because you know we'll remember that next time well we won't have to remember it because i fixed it already

remembered it although now i'm wondering if that's if i think it's fixed but when i set in the next stream it won't be fixed and then we'll go through this whole exercise again we should be we should i should set a test like a small a small ode to semi professionalism but anyway Matter of fact, podcast, least professional podcast you're going to watch tonight or listen to or anything else. But if you hate money and you like knuckleheads, you should become a patron and support the show and keep the wheels on the bus. Yes. Somewhat. At least three of them. Us.

Three wheels and a big enough head of steam, you keep rolling. That's true. That's true. If you'd like to support the show in another way and support a small business, you can get merch at the Southern Gals. And one of these days, we're actually going to sit down with Chris and his wife and discuss all the t-shirt ideas that we keep on saying, oh, we should put that on a shirt. And then I forget about it literally within 45 seconds. Yeah. Well, you know, we're adults with jobs.

You have a child. We're busy people, too. You have a child, too. Yours just has four legs and hair. Yeah, but she mostly ignores me. Oh, just like my cat. Oh, well, there you go then. And my teenager sometimes, depending on her mood.

Well, teenagers will do that sometimes. I remember being a teenager. I was much less moody than my teenager, though. Yeah, I don't know about that. I probably was just as moody. I don't know. I was kind of an asshole as a teenager. Every time I tell mine that she shouldn't use her powers of sarcasm against me,

she reminds me that I gave them to her so it's my true with great sarcasm comes great jokes yeah yeah that I mean she's gonna really need that especially like if she ever works with people yeah I mean truth be told she's um she's something else she can definitely hang with the big boys put it that way good and she'll be able to handle herself that's all it matters all right and since I keep being reminded to do capitalism better code MOF at checkout at disaster coffee it'll get you a couple of percent off your order

I've honestly just got through blowing through the last of the K cups that I bought for my wife's school to donate that they wound up not using because they don't have a curing so they came to work with me nice I wasn't upset no no that's a win yep but if you like coffee pods if you like ground coffee whole bean or if you like green coffee beans want to roast it yourself like the 35 pounds of

never going to run out back there on the shelf you know you should check out disaster coffee indeed which i will actually be doing i finally remembered to cancel my reoccurring orders of coffee so you can thank my wife for that so i will be ordering some disaster coffee to try this weekend just remember if you forget the promo code I will find out and I will harass you. I will definitely forget to use the promo code that I force you to bring up every day. I think I did that to raggle

and I know I've done that to other people. So like, because I'm a company officer, every time an order gets placed on the site, I get a little notification, so-and-so bought this, that, and the other, and blah, blah, blah, and it tells me if they used a promo code. And if I recognize your name

and you didn't use the promo code, you end up on the naughty list. It's just me trying to help you do capitalism, some of that money goes to charity right yeah there's a chunk that goes to charity every year well there you go call it an extra donation i guess we'll consider that anyway topic in in honor of black friday and we should probably talk about black friday ever so briefly before we get to the topic oh yeah i saw that too oh what are you talking about because i know it i'm not sure where you're going now uh people after paid almost a billion dollars worth of their black friday

oh jesus christ i saw that yeah yeah i thought that's where you were going bud there's um there's a there's a there's a there's a banner for that later in the show oh good but but ouch like the i don't think i have to tell you all at this point how i feel about financing stuff on freaking debt especially if it's like small small purchases you should be saving your money for and stuff that isn't absolutely necessary. But the idea that we are like a couple of years ago, this trend started where people were financing their summer vacations and they were not done paying them off by the next summer. And that scared me a little bit.

But now the idea that people are more common than you think. It is, man. You know how many people pay for vacations on credit cards and they never, they never catch back up. Nick, you know, making me feel better. I'm not supposed to. But I'd appreciate it every now and then. It'd be like a little treat.

I'll tell you what, whenever that assault weapons bang gets through, I'll text you. You know, whenever they repeal that, I'll text you for some good news. Oh, so put that on layaway with everybody's Christmas presents, in other words. Yeah. Thanks, Nick. I knew I can call on you. Christmas might come eventually. Yes.

ragel it's expensive this black friday of which you speak although i will say that like doesn't have to be it really doesn't have to be and i'll be honest with you like i go thank you rachel please remind him to use the promo code you will this is why we have wives they they make sure our life functions well or at all yeah But I don't know, man. Like, we'll get to that banner in about 15 or 20 minutes. I was actually going to talk about some unintentional Black Friday shopping I did because I've been amassing things getting ready for Santa's little helper, aka Rebel, to finally ship out the Vicarian, which should be shipping soon. Should be really soon.

I don't know if anybody that's watching right now jumped in on that pre-sale. All the Vicarians are sold. I think he's still got a couple of apothecaries and a handful gizmo gliders, but, Like, most of the talk to him, it was less than a dozen apothecaries or something like that. I don't know how many he ordered. I mean, I don't know how many he had in production this time around, but I know, I know I ordered one of everything and two Gizmo gliders. Nice. And a shirt.

And then I hit the tip button because as cheap as Rebel selling all this stuff, I thought he deserved a little extra. Yeah, that's fair. But I have been ordering things because, like, you know, little here's and there is because like, you know, the plague carrier I have is like in this ancient old condor, which is serviceable. It does the job, but it's it's it's old school. Yeah, but you know, that's these things, if you buy them and they're any kind of reasonable quality, I'm not talking like your Amazon special Tmu crap. it's it's nylon until you abrade through it or rip it or rip the stitching out of it yeah yeah but then you can just put the stitching right back in that's not that big of a deal but until you abrade the fabric away to uselessness or leave it out in the sun until it degrades it's going to be fine it's not like it goes bad no but a lot of the way i set that carrier up was like very typical of

Gwot? Not even that, honestly. It's like, okay, so since we're going to have this discussion, like, let me draw y'all picture. When Nick says early Gwad, the first plate carrier I wore while I was enlisted,

we didn't have, we'd had no molly pouches for it whatsoever. So we literally put the plate carrier on, which, you know, jacked up like safe puff marshmallow bag, because it was so, so bulky. Didn't it have soft armor built into it too?

Debatable supposedly it was like it was supposed to catch Spall but it wasn't like 3A or anything but you did have hard you know level three plate ceramic plates in it but we didn't have molly pouches or anything or placard placards weren't a thing back then

so we literally took our LBE and like tied that onto the Molly so that you'd put the you put your body armor on with the with your suspenders and your pistol belt and everything coming with it and then you would do

up your plate carrier and then snap your belt it was the most early GY hood rat throw stuff together make it work sit in area you've ever seen so needless say the way I said you were right in the transition between

between like the Vietnam style stuff being phased out finally fortunately we did not have forget what it's what the acronym was but yeah the stuff that was left are from Vietnam we didn't see that we saw the newer generation of but it was all M81 woodland camo and we're in DCUs fun fun times fun times that's about right yeah similar to how we were driving green Humvees through the desert with tan doors and tan

tan armor packages it it was a we were a beautiful disaster hey it works man but when I set up that first armor package it was like you know, it was a mag shingle straight to the front. It wasn't on a placard. It was like your very typical condor med pouch that just snapped straight to the molly on the back. It was very typical of the time. And in the intervening years, a lot of things have kind of come and gone. And I saw an opportunity with this vicarian to like, you know, build it a little more modern.

Yeah. So it's worthwhile. I mean, if you're going to be completely starting from scratch, you might as well take advantage of the modern tech. Yeah, and that'll be its own episode. But as far as Black Friday, like I was telling Nick before we started, like these things have been showing up. So I got an antenna extender and a whole cat tail antenna because I need to plan for

comms on this carrier. Some B&C antennas. So I can quickly snap these off of this radio to run it. in a pouch on the carrier oh see your dangler pouch more modern plates just a lot of little things a lot of things that all need to come together

so this this setup kind of works the way I wanted to yeah did you go with the the ultralights or did you go with the just the standard ceramics for the for the plates I didn't go with the ultralights I got the

so I fell into the cop of one of B Robocop. So I got the level four multi-hit rated. Oh, yeah, that's what mine are. I mean, the cost difference was like, when I bought them was like $45 different between single hit rated and multi-hit rated. So I was like, yeah, I think they're like a half a pound heavier per plate or three quarters of a pound heavier.

I mean, but level four plates are not exactly like, you know, feather weight to begin with. So they're the same weight as my level three steel plates. That's not saying a lot, though. No, but it made a very minimal difference in the thickness of my rig. It upgraded my armor's defensive properties very significantly. And it cost me no ergonomics for weight. So it was a win-win.

I mean, at that point, although I have been looking at the ultralight polymer plates, those look very promising. I just need to see a set, like, tested to destruction before I can put any weight behind those polymer plates. I've been talking with a gun dealer around me that occasionally gets armor samples to destructively test, and we test them with my 300 wind mag loads. As you do. As I do, which turns out you can get a lot spicier

than off-the-shelf 300 wind mag ammo. but yeah you can get a lot spicier especially when you start with turning up your own monolithic solid copper

projectiles yeah so just catch a couple of these before we get the topic uh Jeff the plates I had in Iraq were actually ceramic yeah they were

early single hit ceramics weren't they yeah they were technically multi hit but single use multi hit your ass I was told by numerous supply

I was told by multiple supply sergeants, if you take any kind of a hit, even if you drop the things on the ground, if the corner feels a little crunchy afterwards, you junk the plates. Like, that's how fragile this first day. I mean, we're talking about 2004. Yeah, it's very early tech. Late 2003, early 2004. I mean, there's been a lot of advancements in arm over the last 20 years. Yeah. And got to update my plates to ceramic polymer.

I, when I get this carrier in, it will probably be a, it will probably be time for us to talk about that. And probably, so in the process of doing all this, I'm actually moving some stuff around so that I have some of my medical stuff on my battle belt, which I haven't previously. The only thing I had on it was a tourney kid. You never had an I fack on your battle belt? Nope. Even when I shot three gun matches, I always kept an IFAC on my, on my belt. just because man do I not trust certain people nope I added so what I originally ran

was I ran just tourniquet on the belt and then my armor head of an IFAC and my chest rigs all have IFACs so the idea was yeah but now I'm in the position with some of the some of the changes I'm making where I can take some of that medical equipment put it on the belt have more on the carrier

and like spread things out a little bit not just have the one big pouch with the red cross on it yeah some of some of the matches i shot they did not like you running plate carriers so i just always defaulted to my full ifac on my belt yeah i don't know lots lots of irons in the fire then i'm gonna do what i always do which is try it destruction well try it run drills with it probably find stuff i don't like move it around change it i mean you know like i always do as you should as you should you should always test your gear outside of a two way range yes that is the wrong time to be testing your stuff well yeah no no that's not for testing that's for live fire

you should be doing all of your t and e outside of a two way range yeah all right now topic so So I happened across this weird thing as I was crawling the internet, mostly Reddit, which probably won't be a huge surprise to anybody. But people are calling it the buy nothing rebellion. And this I found interesting. So the idea here is that this isn't like people saying I am too poor to go Black Friday shopping or Christmas shopping. This is people making an intentional decision saying, I am not buying crap, period, discussion over. Fair enough. Yeah.

And that caught my interest because, you know, like, I have my own gripes about the intensely consumerist society we live in. I have my own gripes about needless wasting of money on just junk. I have my own gripes about financing, which we'll get to in about 10 or 15 minutes. Anybody wants to hear a fail rant. You might get one tonight because that always drives me freaking crazy. I have my own gripes about all that. Like I would, I, I would love to say that like, I like a minimalist lifestyle. But the truth matter is, it's like, I buy lots of stuff.

But I'd like to say, I'd like to think it's like functional stuff. It's not ornamental. It's stuff that does stuff. There is a difference between buying things to do a specific job or to suit a specific purpose and just buy. things for the 15 second dopamine rush of woohoo new stuff right

exactly yeah so that was kind of where this whole thing really caught my intention was like you have these two chunks of people you have the people there's literally doing this to protest consumerism some to protest

capitalism which I think is a little bit silly but whatever but then you have this this other group that's bound up in the same movement they're saying I can barely afford to eat I'm not buying I'm not buying stuff at these inflated prices like I you find you find this really interesting cross-section of people who are partaking this who are espousing this movement that are basically saying like look I would buy that widget for five dollars but it's not worth 15 so I'm just refusing to buy it fair enough

yeah I mean good well I was going to say like personally I've been screaming for that for years. Like every time I look, every time I see another financial headline about the fact that like the median car price is at $40,000 or $45,000 or it's going up or interest rates or 7%. I'm just like, when are the, when's the consumer going to say enough's enough, I'm not buying it at that price and just refuse. Look, I think I've made the exact same argument with the need with these subscriptions for everything.

Oh, Jesus hell. The subscriptions for your heated seats in your BMW, the subscriptions for the app that remote starts your BMW, the subscriptions to a million different streaming services. I heard about a manufacturer. Go ahead. I heard about a manufacturer recently that was floating the idea of having a subscription to use your cruise control.

No. Just no. Look, it's a basic feature of a car that has existed since before there were reliable computers driving cars since they were vacuum controlled yeah exactly vacuum vacuum cruise control was fine you didn't need any computer to do that and you know i've been arguing for a long time that the reason why trucks are as expensive as they are is because you fucking idiots keep buying them like every one of you jackasses that's buying a four-wheel drive, 2,500 lifted heavy-duty pickup for your office job that you go get groceries to

that you have twice in its life taken to Home Depot. You're the reason why people that actually use their trucks can't get one for under $90,000 or $100,000 now. Like, the market used to, The market for pickups used to be work vehicles and people that own large properties. Dude, I remember the times. I remember the times when an extended cab truck was a rarity. Like, if you saw a truck on the road, it was a single cab. You can't buy a single cab truck from a lot of manufacturers now. I'm not sure toward a completely phased amount, but I know that just amongst the Tacoma

population single cabs like you could almost get a premium if you have a single cab four by four toward a pickup because they are they are not common anymore but people that really go out and wheel them and get them in this shit they and they like that because they have a shorter wheelbase ragel says there was a plan to build advertising into your radio whether it was in use or not it would play ads while you're driving i will rip that shit out the fucking dashboard you know what i've been putting i've been wiring up aftermarket crap and freaking cars for a lot of years that wouldn't even make it home before i would have it ripped at the dash no yeah if i find out my radio's playing ads when i have it turned off the hell with that the car's going back i will

buy shit boxes from now on oh how far are we away that once they have ads on the radio that you have to listen to an ad before you can start your car in the morning i guarantee it would be right behind it. It would be a software update away. That's all it would be. So I'm going to drive my 2015 Tacoma until I die. I keep telling people, I have a 10-year-old pickup. It's going to be a 20-year-old pickup before I feel like getting rid of it, unless the engine explodes and I can't get a new one. I was about saying at this point, dude, I'd stuff another 1GR and a fresh transmission underneath that truck and just keep rocking and rolling. I mean, hell, I'm going to rebuild the whole front-end suspension next weekend nice it's got reasonably new brakes on it's got 170,000 miles like

the transmission and it has been flushed in service the engine runs like a top why would I get rid of the damn thing it does everything I wanted to exactly and it doesn't complain or play ads for you while it does it truth anyway okay are we ready for the rant go for it. You want, you want the rant. You've been waiting for this. I like a nice rant. Quit financing, your crap. A billion dollars this Black Friday so far.

A billion dollars in afterpay. And understand what I'm saying. Like, putting stuff on a credit card is catastrophically stupid already. Unless you're going to immediately pay it off at the end of the month. Let's be honest. Most people aren't doing that because everybody's up to their freaking eyeballs in debt. But putting it on freaking afterpay, with an effective interest rate exceeding 60% if you miss a couple of payments, like, tell me how much, how fast that adds up for you.

Yeah. Well, I'm looking right now, and it looks like the average afterpay APY is in the low 30s for percentage. So a billion dollars at a 30% interest rate. that's how much money these these companies stand to make and they're unregulated entirely unregulated that that's the part that makes me the most nauseated clarna after pay shop pay whatever whatever you can have a credit score of zero yes

they are completely unregulated the Jesus Christ and here's the thing of it on the one hand I am like as red-blooded capitalist is the next person. I think you should have the legal right to make awful financial decisions and screw yourself for life if that's what puts lead in your pencil in the morning. But then on the exact opposite hand, my libertarianism gets tested so hard when we start

talking about this stuff because most of the people that are getting themselves in debt with this stuff aren't, I don't want to say smart because it's not smart sounds. Well, they're not educated. They're not informed. They're not financially sophisticated enough to understand the thing they're being offered. like this is one of those moments where I get twisted up because on the one hand I am like make bad if you want to snort heroin do you know you do you just don't do it around me like you know libertarian to the max but on the other hand I'm like but this is

almost like giving a kid on a playground cocaine they have no earthly idea what they're sticking up their nose or how bad it is for them yeah yeah I would I would agree with that I mean, look, I don't like large, heavy-handed government regulations either, but the federal government also took charge of education. And what have they happened with educational standards since? Oh, it's gotten far worse. It always does. Everything the government touches gets worse. Every single thing they touch always gets worse.

But I would say if the federal government is taking responsibility. for education, especially financial education, because you know parents aren't really doing it. They should. They should do it. Most parents don't know either. Right. They don't know either. And, you know, fair enough, you can't teach somebody what you don't know.

But if you have kids, you should probably look into financial information. But being that the federal government is the one in charge of educating people on how finances work, because they are the ones in charge of managing what education needs. there are, I suppose the only argument at this point is either regulating them like a credit card, which is kind of what these afterpay situations are. They function almost exactly like a credit card or regulated as a loan. Because we already have debt regulations. We don't need new ones. We just need people to get their heads out of their asses and stop saying that this, no, it's different because it's afterpay. Well, so is a goddamn credit card. So is a mortgage.

Let me clip back a couple of a couple of Jeff comments before I round that out. Because I have the way to fix this problem. It'll never happen, but it would fix it in one shot. The gold standard. Huh? The gold standard. No. Stop creating more money.

Well, that, but no. So Jeff said didn't two companies already go under due to that? I hope so. I don't think they went under. I know that Klarna is currently, like, suing the hell out of a lot of high balance holders because they're just refusing to pay back for money, which brings us to how many of these people have zero plan to pay it back, though. So here's the thing.

I would argue most of those people don't have a plan. No, they definitely don't. I think what Jeff was really asking was how many of them don't plan to pay it back? Like, are actively planning to not pay it? Yes, they are. I'm sure there is a percentage of them, and they've been getting away with it for a while. And these places lost quite a considerable number of millions of dollars last year. I can't remember what it was, but it was a lot.

I'll look it up. Oh, Klarna has written millions off their balance sheet as a result of uncollectable debt to the point where they've started sending lawyers after these people and summoning them to court. But here's the thing. Here's the way to fix loans, credit cards, Klarna, the whole nine years. here's how to fix everything matter of fact here's how we could also fix the u.s automakers so we never have to bail them out again here's how we could fix your big investment banks and you know your your bear sterns and your leman brothers we can fix all that never be a problem again you're ready for this it's called consequences i'll be damned so what you do is is you lay down the law and tell

them that the federal government is never again going to bail your company out period in discussion not happening you get there is no more too big to fail there is no free money there is no we're guaranteeing your your debts none of that nonsense there is no by the way getting

out of it by going into bankruptcy if you do we get all of our big corporate donations here's the cool part you wouldn't you would actually work for the American people concept I know but you do all that and you tell these companies you can do play as fast and lose as you want with the rules

but when it blows up in your face every single person who lost money gets to bring you the CEO and the board into court individually personally no hiding behind the company no hiding behind the LLC no hiding behind for due chair responsibility and lawyers you get to go to court personally and you get the face down millions of people who lost their life savings because you were an idiot you would essentially be revoking all of the limited liability corporation if you don't want regulation then you don't get the safety net and if you want the safety net then you get the regulations and now i can make every single one of those or entities opt in or out and if you opt in here your regulations shut up and play by the rules i suppose you don't like it then you could go

out on your own and do it your own way and libertarian it to the max. But if you're going to do that, you don't get a safety net, which means when it blows up in your face because you want a 2008 all over again, you get to freaking eat it. But the problem we have now is that we have entities trying to play fast and lose to make lots of money, but they want the safety net anyway. And that's where I have a problem. We can't, we can't do, we can't have about one foot on each side of the fence. It's either, either you be libertarian or we do, we do capitalism with a safety net that's i think that's a pretty reasonable take do you want to know what clara has for uncollectible debt as of quarter one for just quarter one 2025 okay let me let me let me

let me let me guess um i'm going to say a hundred and 17 million 99 million they're actually good better than you thought they're only uncollectable on 99 million which is wild uh let's see 137 million from 2024 in total Nice So they're getting close They've definitely exceeded their 2024 losses

I wonder Jeff says consequences are racist I'm okay with that Your terms are acceptable to me I suppose I suppose Anyway so yes Please quit financing

crap you can live without If you are not going to literally die, starve to death or be homeless without it, then you should put it off until you have saved the money to pay for it. And if that means you have to tell you're sending giving the others, your loved ones and everybody else, sorry, the money's a little tight. That's called being an adult. I've done it to my wife. She's done it to me. It's a thing. We both survive. We're still married happily. Like it works out. You know, we had this discussion with their families every year that we we me and my wife lately have been we've been the last few years

pairing back how much we do around the holidays as far as parties gifts and everything it was just getting to be too much i feel i'm sure you've experienced this any guy out there that's married i'm sure you've experienced this too well me and my wife up until recently we're very fortunate and all of our grandparents up until the last couple of years we're still alive and still around and still wanted to do all the holidays so that's her immediate family my immediate family two sets of grandparents from each side all wanted to do Christmas. Oh, my. Right.

Now, even if you're doing just like a grab bag gift exchange, that's a lot of gifts to, number one, find the time to buy, and number two, to pay for buying. It's a lot. And we decided just for the mental load it was taking up, that we were going to pair down to just buying. gifts for our immediate family and just the limited selection of that that we do and you know what it made things more enjoyable it made the party more enjoyable because we weren't trying to race around

at the last minute and remember which gift goes to which house because sometimes we had a gift for say like i think one year i had my father-in-law at three houses from three different grab bags now every house has a different limit on how much you're supposed to how much you're not supposed to spend over some of those houses were significantly higher than others so did you oops and bring too expensive a gift or did you oops and bring the gift for the wrong house like come on that just got to be a ton look if there's one thing americans really excel at other than you know tearing up people who mess with their boats it's overcomplicating something that's supposed to be fun i i have consistently told my wife every single year and she gets aggravated every time I say it and I don't

care that she could tie a bow around herself and I've gotten everything I want for Christmas. I literally want and need nothing. Here's the thing. I'm an adult. I buy stuff when I want it after the retirement, the savings counts and everything else are plumped up. So when we get to December, it's not like I have like a Christmas list. I'm just like I am a pretty content. dude i've got my wife i've got my daughter we're comfortable we get to spend time together i have a decent work life balance i don't need anything and i don't want much yeah i i have a hard time every year in fact this year 90% of what i put on my christmas list is disposable tooling for my lid that's that's fair it's consumable i'm going to wear it out i've already worn out most of what i have

I need new. But people, well, that's not a fun Christmas gift. Bullshit. I'm going to have a shitload of fun with that late this winter because I'm not going to be doing shit outside. Because it's cold. It was like negative 12 this morning. Oh, that's just gross. It was 38 degrees outside this morning.

And I was, I was not a, huh? That's a balmy 38. No, not when it's like just finished raining. And it's like 95% humidity. it was it was the kind of cold and wet that had all my bones hurting it was not not fine yeah you definitely shouldn't come here uh you don't have to work that hard to talk me out of it aside from just the illinoisness it of it i was about saying hard time in the weather it's very illinois up there and it snows so sorry you're you're not making a case in november

oh no sometimes it snows in October. I will say though that this is the time of year where my wife revises her plans to move like to Arkansas and she's like maybe we should go further south. Well that's fair. Yeah, but then she's down here in the summer and it's like I want to move where it snows

year round. So we'll figure it out. It's hard to strike a balance. There's probably like three places on the globe where it's a comfortable 70 most of the year and they're probably all full of people you don't want to deal with. They are absolutely full of people I don't want to deal with. well yeah because why would they leave it's nice there

rag my boy ragel knows where i'm coming from yeah that's a hell to the no nick it's not even that cold bro it wasn't even in like the negative thirties yet you you know you know no no i'm just i'm no we're gonna move on so what do people buy that they do not need sweet god souvenirs Souvenirs was not something on my list, although I kind of have the next best thing to souvenirs, which is collectibles, Labubu, Beanie Babies, and Troll Dolls. What is a Labubu?

It is a Korean Beanie Baby. Okay. It's a, I understand these terms. Yeah. I mean, you remember Beanie Baby, right? Oh, I do. My grandma worked at a collectibles store at the time, and we were all given. A large number of them.

So you remember Beanie Babies. You remember the troll dolls. Well, Labubu is just another version of something for people to waste retarded amounts of money on. Hmm. Okay. Let me guess. Let me guess. They make limited runs of each one.

They will never make that pattern again, ever. And they're definitely going to appreciate and value in the next 10 years. um yes yes almost certainly not and so the same promises from all of the other ones and the blank box this one has the adds in the blank box model oh so it's a prize box model it's a gotchapon game so you wind up having to buy like 20 having to make sure you get the one you really want uh dude this stuff is like freaking cocaine for freaking like elder gen extras and boomers i say that i mean there's millennials buying these stupid things by the bucket too which is just dry i'm sure there are i mean there's stupid people in every generation but like it's like the like the commemorative

plates that your grandparents always used to buy or commemorative shot glasses stuff like that's like are you going to use them i've not been watching South Park lately. I really should. I haven't watched South Park in a while, but the fact that they had the feature Lububoos on them does not shock me at all. No, like the only thing that's that I will say that my family collects and I will do it unashamedly is Christmas ornaments. We do the same thing. When we go, when we go to a new place, usually we'll pick one up. Yeah. Every state park or every trip we go on, I look for a patch to add to my roof. Sure.

And every time we go on a trip to Gare's family, we go look for a Christmas ornament. So that every Christmas, as we're decorating the tree, we're kind of like reliving all those trips we've been on. I think that's reasonable because you're number one, you're getting a use out of it. You're getting a use out of it. Like the things that drive me crazy,

I think the most are, like I've said, the commemorative plates. You're never going to eat off it. So all it's doing is adding, more dusting to the house chores that's that's really all is great you've got plates hanging up on the wall that you now need to clean a couple times a year and hope you don't drop and break oh coffee mugs ragel i am married to a gal that works in the education system just like

phil how many coffee mugs come home around christmas time every year um i don't think any of her students watch the show so i can say that a number of them get re-gifted. Yeah. Regifted, chucked right in the trash. My God. I mean, when we got married, we got gifted. I want to say conservatively a dozen coffee mugs that match the plate.

You know, like the stuff you get when you eat. The pretty ones. Yeah, I mean, they're decent coffee mugs. They're not the ones I prefer. The base is too narrow. They tend to tip over and dump hot coffee on your lap. only took one time of that before i stopped using those things um but we have two people in this house that drink coffee we both pretty much use the same coffee mug every single day we do not

need a dozen coffee mugs yes you no even when we're hosting company we do not need a dozen coffee mugs you just need more times in the afternoon no i got plenty i got plenty of friends i got more than enough friends wait wait wait what do you what do you mean it's in the afternoon like you don't drink coffee in the afternoon my friends don't they're weird what the hell yeah why are they your friends well you know because they're weird but no no nick there's different kinds of weird there's there's likes to run around in the woods where night vision weird right yeah and then there's warhammer 40k weird and then there's don't drink coffee in the damn afternoon weird and that's not a good kind of weird so it turns out most of my friends have

ADHD and they're medicated. So they're not they don't drink cap they don't feel the need to drink caffeine anymore. I'm medicated too with coffee. Right. Me too. So like what they need to do is get rid of the amphetamines and drink coffee and they'll be fine. It'll work. That's what I said. Stop micro dosing meth. Start macro dosing caffeine. Yes. Works perfect. It does. I mean, sometimes I drink. Rag was on my side. Wrong weird, Nick. You've never played Warhammer with my friends it's quite a good time uh ragel you cannot borrow my night vision but i can help you i can help you i can't be weird together we can we can be weird at night that's the best kind of weird see that's a good kind of weird not drinking coffee in the afternoon not a good weird i don't know

a lot of them don't drink either can't get him to have a beer with me they're all on the whole alcohol's bad for you kick and coffee's bad for you oh jesus christ everything Everything's bad for me. Every single product I buy at the store comes with a cancer label from California. If California'd stop giving people cancer, we wouldn't have to have all these warning labels. Listen, everything is bad for you. If you don't believe me, how many, Nick, how many people do you know breathe oxygen? All of them so far.

How many people do you know are going to live forever? Well, at least one that I can think of. I'm pretty sure my realtor is some kind of hag. then oxygen is 99.999% lethal. Yeah. Or even enough of it, it'll kill you. Don't believe me, check in with me in a couple of years. You'll find out.

Anyway, yeah, so collectibles, and also I had to put status symbols. Because I was thinking of a good catch-haul term for things, but like, you know, there's people that buy sports cars and never drive them. There's people that buy RVs, and they spend more time parked than they do, you know, actually like in a campsite doing anything there's people that upgrade into a house three times as big as they can legitimately make use of because they just have to have the thing that impresses your neighbor it really comes down to people spend a lot of money on bull crap that they don't need trying to impress people they probably don't like anyway yeah it's it's oh shoot that's that was

almost a direct quote of a line from a fight club buying things you don't want or you don't need to impress people you don't like with money you don't have that yeah okay that's fair we need coffee mugs when you when you don't inevitably come visit because it's snowing in illinois i didn't say i wouldn't come visit just not when it's snowing true we'd have to have a discussion on what you can or can't bring with you as far as the state is concerned um why is the state have to know i'm in the state they don't i'm just saying i did i'm not your mom or your lawyer do what you want so we just need to make sure we know what the tensile strain of zip ties is so we can attach things to the frame of the truck in such a way that is difficult to find and plausibly

deniable. Yes. Hang on a second. He does make a point. Why do you use a cutter on a rounded cigar? You're supposed to use a punch. So I'll be honest. I, okay.

Now, it should come as little surprised to anybody that's known me for more than 15 milliseconds that I'm definitely on the spectrum someplace. We don't know if it's like way over this end or way, way over that end. Probably that. But I have a thing about. about texture about a lot of things like food texture clothing texture you'll

sometimes see me start doing this a lot because like my shirt's rubbing me on the neck and it just drives me nuts and one of the things that has always driven me is the feeling of smoking a cigar that's been punched I can't I cannot describe to you why I don't know why it just something about it just gives me a little bit of a neck shiver so interesting I understand completely and totally that you are supposed to punch a rounded cigar and you only clip something like a torpedo. I get that. Unfortunately, this is America and I can do what the hell I want. True. I mean, I joined a cigar and pipe club in college because I, you know, why would you not?

And the man at the cigar shop that taught me about cigars, he never said anything. about it and he owned a cigar shop so no i usually cut a v notch in mind with a pocket knife because i'm too lazy to carry a clipper yeah and if i'm if i'm ever someplace where i don't have my clipper that is my next option is just take a pocket knife and v notch the back of it it works but i can do a v notch i cannot do a punch i couldn't even explain me why it's different just that it's different and it just doesn't work for me it's just one of those things that bugs you so why not avoid it yeah but anyway um oh here's here's one you'll appreciate cheap crap because it'll break and then you have to buy it twice yeah i was told by my dad a very

very long time ago quote rabelais are not rich enough to buy cheap tools because you end up having to buy them twice although my old man was a craftsman convert and they're not exactly like you know super tough so to be fair at the time he was probably buying most of his craftsmen tools they were very good quality tools they've been in shitified

I mean I dude I've still got a lot of craftsman hand tools from back in the day that I bought when I was a teenager and they're still like I have abused them beat on them whoop their ass and they're just thank you sir I have another yeah

Rago makes a good point Harvard Freight is good enough most of the time. Harbor Freight's hand tools lately, their quality is really, really good. Surprisingly, yes. Especially, like their Paramount series for wrenches and sockets. Holy crap for those

things great. We've got a bunch of them at work mostly because we kept losing the nice ones that the boss would buy, so we started buying those, and we haven't lost them, but they still work five or seven years later, which is pretty cool.

but what are you going to know but yeah not just talking about tools but like tools shoes yeah i i am a frugal person i like a deal i refuse to buy cheap shoes for two reasons i am 43 years old i have been very mean to my body over the years and my life is my remaining life is too freaking short to walk around in screwed up shoes and make my feet her for no freaking reason than trying to save 20 bucks. I will buy the expensive shoes, the expensive hiking boots, I will buy the expensive socks. I'll buy the expensive underwear. If it touches my skin, I wanted to caress me like the hand of an angel and not feel bad about it. Because buying cheap clothing and cheap shoes, it wears out three times as fast. Yeah, when I was buying,

and this is not to shit on Wolverine boots because they're a decent boot okay they are they're decent but it's not Red Wing I am walking on steel chips concrete and cutting oil the souls of Wolverine boots

do not hold up well in that environment Red Wing makes boots with souls specifically tailored to machinists they're fantastic I've had the I've had the last two pair of boots that I bought since 2018, 2019.

And I'm still on that two pairs of boots where I was going through a pair of Wolverines, not quite more than once a year, like every 10 to 11 months. You know, so a little bit more than once a year. So I remember when I was still working my way through college, I was working on flight line. So I was an aircraft handler, refueler, ramp guy, you know, the whole nine yards. I used to keep two pairs of Doc Martin industrials, and I would burn a pair down in a year. Now, I believe that. Although, to be fair, I'm out there in the sun, in the rain, in the, in the sleet, not really snow down here horribly often.

But, you know, like there were times I was on the ramp, and it was 28 degrees with a 15 mile an hour wind, and it's sleeting on the ramp. So your boots are getting wet. which is not great for the leather. Usually what killed a set of boots for me was that the leather on the toe would actually kind of like disband from the steel toe. And then you'd get a little rip in it

and it would just peel itself back. Yeah, they'll do that. You know, Jeff says his Red Wings only lasted him six months. Jeff, it's entirely going to depend on which Red Wings you bought. Yeah. Because there are Red Wings, Red Wings, and Red Wings. And if you're not buying a sole type

that is appropriate for your environment, then they're not going to last. It's possible the soles on yours were too soft. It's possible that you didn't have the oil-resistant version of those souls. If you had certain kinds of oils and solvents you're around. And there's some solvents that are just going to kill boots. There are. I mean, they're a consumable item.

But I'm on concrete and a machine. shop 40 hours a week plus and I rotate through a pair every other day I switch boots so they've lasted me now five years tall it five six years that's not awful at all no for two boots yeah they're you know they're probably around three you know with tax 250 300 bucks a pair so you're talking 600 bucks in boots so 100 bucks a year I was going the I think at the time when I was buying Wolverines, they were 140, and I was going through every 10 to 11 months. Yeah. So the math works out in your favor when you buy better.

It doesn't have to be your Red Wings. Buy the boots that last the best for what you're doing. That's all I'm saying. Same with the gloves. Oh, God, yes. No, I was going to throw something in there, but that's not even fair. I was going to say don't buy cheap safety glasses but cheap safety glasses are actually still fairly useful

but they are to a point to a point. That's why I said I was going to throw that in there but I was like, uh, debatable like cheap safety glasses are better than safety squints but when when a frigging disc explodes in your hand and it mock fuck a piece like goes halfway through your safety glasses and then stops you really really really want to buy the expensive ones at that point so the there are safety glasses

and then there are antsy rated safety glasses as long as they are rated appropriately for the job you're doing it doesn't matter if you buy cheaper expensive as far as the lenses go they are rated to take an impact they will take that impact if they don't hey congrats they failed their impact test that you did and now you're going to be owed a shitload of money because they didn't meet their safety standards so there you go um the benefits you get from the better safety glasses is you get better coverage on the top sides and bottom they they conform to your face better and they usually have a larger variety of sizes specifically so they conform to your face better like my um my prescription these these are impact rated frames and lenses these are not my safety glasses

but they can work as a safety glasses my safety glasses they have a for work they have an eye cup that actually completely contacts all the way around my eye because of the grinding grit and stuff at work phenomenal i use those things for everything now but there are prescription safety glasses they're going to cost you 150 bucks yeah that's that's going to be my next little thing to deal with is I am very slowly getting near-sighted. I think I'm almost at the point of having just suck it up and embrace it. Man, I found I don't mind wearing glasses. Like, I can see well enough to function day to day.

I pass the driver's test without them. It's not an issue. But if I'm doing a lot of detail work, I get a headache if I don't wear. My problem is is that if I'm tired or if it's very bright outside, I can see like inside the car crystal clear. try to read that street sign that's a block and a half away can't even tell there's words on it

it might as well be Chinese like well I mean one of the things you could look into then is some prescription safety glasses well and I'd kind of already made of my mind that if I when I eventually suck it up I'm just going to go ahead

and like swing for the fences and get something that is impact rated so I can wear them to the gun range and you know like I don't want to be in the situation of oh I have to wear safety goggles on top of my glasses, with the exception of things like chainsaws and, you know, things where I need a little more protection than the glasses in that case, just go with a face shield over your

glasses. And I do anyway. But like when I'm running chainsaw, I have a face shield on top of safety glasses. Because I have this thing about wanting to have both my eyeballs. And, man, I, I've seen some pretty gnarly eye injuries. Hard pass. I mean, the Oakley's makes it really good. These are a metal framed glass. I don't even think they make. these frames anymore i've had them for so damn long but oakley makes some pretty good metal framed prescription glasses that are safety they're ballistic rated yeah anyway um what do people need but it's all crap i only have one thing in here i'm sure you have something else what you got cars modern cars

I disagree you can disagree and be wrong at the same time that is within bounds okay so what I have seen as a broad trend across the automotive industry there's no debating the prices have gone up precipitously

they have okay there's also a mounting wave of evidence to show that things like fit and finish like rattles like panel gaps that used to be pretty well understood and accepted like this is a minimum level of this is a minimum level of fit and finish for vehicle even something like i don't want to say an economy car but like a mid-sized car like a toyed camry sure you expect a toyed camry to have all the all the panel gaps are the same it looks like it was put to care of some kind of care but what people are seeing on dealership lots now is that brand new vehicles look like they were thrown together by blind people and then we have the rash of Eco Boost engines that are blowing up in

Forge. The rash of 3.6 Pentostars are blowing up in Chryslers. We have all the transmission and transfer case issues in Jeeps. We have the rash of all the friggin diesel engines. All the goddamn diesel engines in the

little be diesels in your Dodge trucks, your Chevy trucks have all been freaking exploding left, right, and center. Toyota's new V6 Twin Turbo apparently likes to ship main bearings that's good for it oh oh

Nissan Nissan got the bright idea to take and put you remember I showed you the other Rube Goldberg machine the variable compression ratio engine Oh yeah putting in the road Which by the way

It's a really really cool engine design Unfortunately it also likes to shit main bearings Well that's less than helpful Well you know why would you put something with three times as much You know as many reciprocating parts in it and they put it in an economy car where people famously don't change their oil very often. Well, that's a problem. That's a lot of problems.

So I guess what I'm saying is like there is this mounting evidence to show that as the price of vehicles has continued to go up and up and up, the quality control and the reliability has not been keeping pace. Now we're at the point where there are people financing $50,000 vehicles, for up to eight freaking years for a car that has a maximum lifespan of 100,000 miles. We're way outside the realm of like

the good old days where you could buy like a five-year-old used Toyota drive at 300,000 miles and you'd have it paid off for seven or eight or nine years, by the way. Well, I think that you are right to an extent. I don't know.

Maybe it's because I'm not as much of a car guy. I think that a large portion of the price increase has been the government-mandated, forced technology in these cars. That hasn't been helpful, but there's more. I'm sure there probably is. And, hey, like I said, I'm not a car guy. I'm really not. I like my truck. I like cars.

They do useful things. I don't particularly understand them that well. I've never taken the time to really learn. I have so many other things that I use my time for. So here's the thing, Nick. It's not, believe it or not, all the, all the force technology, the safety features that the government mandated, which, which by the way includes like your backup cameras, your tire pressure monitoring systems. Let's see here. Every manufacturer is required to warranty their emissions devices for, I think, minimum 100,000 miles.

Okay. I want to say I had heard that they were discussing, putting blind spot monitoring, making that like standard across all vehicles in the U.S. I don't think that actually ended up happening, though, but anyway, here's the thing about economy is a scale. When you put a thing in every vehicle you make on a line, it gets cheaper to add that thing versus if you only add a part of the time. It actually, no doubt. Yeah, for sure. Now, do you know what the real driver for a lot of the cost increase has been? I'm guessing inflation.

Government mandated fuel targets. Yeah. Because here's the thing. That changes how they have to make the energy works. Well, not just the engine works. But it's worse than that. So forcing manufacturers to consistently ratchet up their fuel economy, forces them to make a lot of design, a lot of design compromises.

And that's the here's the thing. Increases a lot of cost. Yeah, it also, not only that, but at a certain point, like, here's the thing, if you want an engine that makes, you know, 10 out of 10 power and 10 out of 10 fuel economy and 10. And 10 noise and vibration and one out of 10 cost, guess what you have? The word impossible. So what manufacturers do is they say, if we want more power, it's got to cost more. It's going to make more noise and the gas models are going to go to shit. Or we're going to like we got, we, it's like the old. old slider bar toy where when you move one slider up, all the rest come down. Like that's how this compromise works in engineering. So the problem is the government has said

Thou shalt make better gas mileage or you will not sell in the U.S. So the manufacturers have no decision there. It has to be done. And at the same time the buying public is demanding. We want good fuel economy. We want low noise. We don't want a lot of vibration.

We want this. We want this. We want this. And the only lever the manufacturer has has left to balance the scale out is cost through the ceiling and reliability is coming down. And that's the ugly truth that a lot of people in the car industry and a lot of people that, because like I do follow cars because it was the first, it was for a lot of years that was going to be the industry I was going to sink my career into. And I'm seeing as the, as they try to push all the, all the needles to the max.

Like, I personally, just as an anecdote, what I think is going on with like this most modern Twota V6, a twin turbo V6 that Twita's having all these problems with, my suspicion, because what TWA has said is they had a manufacturing defect where they left some machining debris in the oil passages. It's easy to do. It's easy to do, but that doesn't usually just take out your main bearings. It goes everywhere. I was going to say, that tends to take out your oil pump first.

Well, here's the problem. Those engines are not, those engines are not grenading cam bearings, and they're not grenading rod bearings, or only grenading main bearings, and that's weird. And the problem is, once one's blown up, you can't tell if the debris came from the bearings or if it was already in there. Oh, yeah, because when a bearing goes, it tends to throw debris everywhere. And turns out metal bearing pieces look an awful lot like steel chips.

So kind of what I'm thinking is happening. And I think this, by the way, this is probably also what GM has done, because, you know, they've had it a massive engine recall recently. They've had a huge engine recall with a lot of their 5.3-liter V8s that come in a lot of their half-ton trucks and their Tahos and the suburbs. I think all these manufacturers got into the trap of we have to make better fuel economy, but we can't sacrifice anything else. So I think these idiots all resorted to the oldest trick in the book. Cheapest parts possible. Huh?

Cheapest parts possible? Worse than that. So years and years and years ago, I had a buddy who used to friggin' drag race. And his secret sauce for making more power than anybody else can make out of that displacement was he rebuilt his own engines and he rebuilt his engines frequently. He ran the bearings at the minimum tolerance he possibly could, as loose as humanly possible. It worked for a short period of time. Yeah, because then you're just going to spin the bitch, lock it up and yeah, no, that's not good. But as long as you pop that engine and replace those mains and rod bearings all the time,

those things revved faster and made more power, had less drag. They had less mechanical loss. It works. And I think every one of these manufacturers are doing the same stupid thing. I think they're all running their bearing clearances too loose. They're all running as thin an oil as humanly possible trying to boost fuel economy. I have heard of cars now running on like zero weight. Zero W20 and zero.

Yeah. Dude, my dad just got a friggin' new Highlander. I want to say it runs like 0.W. 13 or something like that. It's like water. No. Now, I can't prove any of this, by the way. This is just like my armchair mechanic, I suspect this is what's going on. But I know that all these engines are eating bearings left, right, and center.

And that's only caused by a couple of different things. One is you spec entirely the wrong. and bearings in that engine. They're too soft. You're running, you're running too thin of oil and too little pressure, or you're run your bearing clearance is too big. Or your temperatures are getting too high. And that's another thing. These manufacturers have been doing that for years, running the, running the engine temperatures. Like my engine, 179 up to about 190 degrees Fahrenheit, it's pretty happy anywhere in there. If it's in the summer, which by the way, summer's down here

freaking brutal and you're going up a hill for a while like pulling a low like you'll see a buck 96 on the on the dash but I've seen vehicles that regularly run to 200 plus because the hotter you get the cylinder heads the more complete of a fuel

economy a fuel burn you get so there's less emissions I it makes sense it makes total sense but the point is I see these manufacturers sacrificing reliability to try to make all the needles move up at the same time Well, you'd have to run looser bearing clearances, too, if you're running a hotter engine anyway because of the thermal coefficient of expansion. Interesting.

I mean, it makes sense because one of the, yeah, it makes a lot of sense that that could be what it is. I mean, that would be one reason why it's the main bearings and the main bearings exclusively that seem to be blowing up on everything lately. But here's my frustration. Gen 4 L.S. Small blocks in like your early 2000 Chevys. Okay. 200,000 mile engine. Easy. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. If you took care of it, no problem. Yeah. I've seen people pull those things out of frigging in trucks and junkyards, slap a turbocharger on them and stick them in something a little bit and make a ridiculous amount of horsepower. Those engines take a whoop and keep going. Toyota. Toyota has half million mile trucks all over the road.

Now you're telling me these guys can't figure out how to make a. friggin' twin turbo v6, it doesn't shit its bearings inside of 50,000 miles? Different engineers. Okay. You know, the original engineers are all dead now. GM's latest run of their new generation of V8,

which has cylinder deactivation, variable ham timing, and yad, yada, yada, yada, y'a, trying to eke out all the fuel economy that possibly can. Yeah, those things have been known to lock up at 8,000 miles before they're even due for their first oil change, which, by the way, the manufacturer telling everybody 10,000 mile oil change intervals.

Fucking why? Oil is dirt cheap. Because it calculates into your lifetime ownership cost. And if you can stretch out the fluid package hedge a little further, then it lets you say that it wouldn't cost you X amount of thousand miles over the lifetime of the vehicle. I can't remember the last time I got an oil change how much it costs. But I got an oil change. Wipers, fluid top off and a bunch of other things in a tire.

rotation on my truck and i don't think it was more than 70 bucks now here's the thing of it um Jeff that could be true i don't know well no i will so when we talk about diesels i will 110 percent agree with Jeff that the environmental regulations the frigging um the DEF fluid the region everything like old school you know what DEF fluid is right it's piss and it's it's chicken piss yeah but you got to bear in mind like, dude, think about like old school diesels like from the late 90s, early 2000s. Those things were, I mean, they

It wasn't broken in for the first half million miles. Yeah, but my point is that they were dirty and they were loud and they were contangrous, but they lasted for freaking ever. Modern diesels are driven around by drama queens at malls and they break if you spit on them. Yeah. Unless, like Raggle said, delete the dagham things.

Or yeah, 7.3 power. stroke it'll it'll outlive you and your children probably more than likely yeah but again so like that's why i throw modern cars in here i've watched the car in like i i'm sitting on a 2015 to coma i don't think i'll ever replace it willingly it's reliable i know of at least two 500 000 Toyota's with 1GRs that are on the road today. So the truck's got good bones to it. It's paid off. It's simple.

There's not a lot of text. There's not a lot of stuff to go wrong. And most of the stuff that they can go wrong, I know how to fix. That's fair. But I look at that and then I look at the modern Tacoma, which, by the way, is like a $42,000 vehicle base model. Yeah. Already having issues left, right, center, not as durable as the older Tacomas were.

And that was the whole selling point behind the Tacoma, too, was the durability of it and the affordability of it. Yeah. But anyway, so yeah, I'm going to say modern cars. Modern cars, everybody needs a car. They're all crap. I can't think of a single, I cannot think of a single, like, new vehicle for sale today that I would willingly get into. Yeah, I don't know. I guess I don't know enough to adequately comment. See, my problem is that every, if someone did that to me, said, you must pick a new vehicle today.

My immediate gut feeling is, why can't I just go get something used? They're cheaper. They're almost, they're almost certainly better quality. You know, better quality. They're put together with more care and they're more reliable. That's fair. Yeah. That's fair.

so what else do people have to have and it's all crap new construction homes or is that just like way too low well people have made crappy construction homes with shitty construction techniques for as long as they've been building houses the only benefit to an older house as you know it hasn't fallen down so far so far no seriously that's that's really what it is i mean i my first house that i bought was built in nineteen forty six and when i opened up the walls some of the king's studs were made out of eight pieces okay but so but those were eight really stout pieces nick some of them weren't even nailed together so you know you know the house hadn't fallen down yet so it's probably not that bad granted that house had been on fire at least once in its life before i bought it but you know it didn't fall down while it burned and it didn't burn to the ground it's whatever but that's really all it is a survivor bias you know a lot of a lot of the modern constructed homes yes the interior

fits and finishes are not nearly as good but that's down to the square footage demands that the public has right now everybody wants a bigger square footage number instead of a quality square footage because finishes are expensive finishes are really expensive that's sad though but a lot of clothes a lot of clothes are really absolutely ass I think the last couple times the last couple times I went to buy undershirt before I started buying this particular brand of undershirt I went through, we went to, I think it was Coles where we were getting them. I went through five or six of them on the rack before I found one that didn't have like a hole in the seam already. Or the fabric wasn't damaged already.

Coles is not a premium place, but it used to be a place like when I was growing up. It was a place to go to get affordable but still reasonable quality clothing. I don't know. I just see the fabric is so damn thin. on a lot of these clothes. Here's a raggle with the layup, phones. Yeah, I don't know. I've had my phone for probably about five years.

It's been pretty okay so far. But you do acknowledge that you holding onto a phone for five years, you are already not the norm. True. I also acknowledge the fact that this is probably the second longest I've owned a phone before I have smashed it doing something I shouldn't. See, you are with phones the way I am with. sunglasses. I refuse to buy expensive ones because they, they don't survive very long.

Do you remember the razor flip phone, Phil? I never had one, but yes. I got one when it first came out, the original first gen razor phone with the all metal case on it. That'd be worse some money these days. If you hadn't broken it splinters. Well, I didn't break it to splinters. I ran it over with a skidloader. Well, it got ran over with a skidloader. I wasn't driving on a gravel on a gravel road. It smashed it to absolute shit. But I had that phone for like from the time I was 17 to like 23. It was a really good phone. It was fantastic. And then I went through a phone every four months. Basically like clockwork despite buying the like the Motorola at the time had their their like their contract. grade phone their construction phone that was it was supposed to be extremely durable it was supposed be completely waterproof it wasn't if you flipped the phone open just like with your thumb you could snap the screen off in just the in just the inertia from flipping the phone open you could throw the screen right out of the phone it was hilarious that's that's that's not terrible oh it was super

terrible but i don't know man it was it was not great all right so what is still a good buy like what what is what is out there that a person could still get their needs met and get things they need without getting fleeced i don't have it still clothing huh ironically i'm going to say clothing again i will kind of go with clothing too i will just say that like some clothing is really great yeah i will say that like i have really fallen into to Wrangler for a while. Wrangler, I have actually been willing to buy again very recently. I think they have an ATG canvas series of pants that are just fantastic. And I am around very abrasive stuff all day. Ooh, Jeff's got a good one. Stainless steel water bottles.

Ah, yes. It's kind of hard to go wrong with a stamped steel construction of anything. because I mean you can see this one is no longer flat on the bottom my wife hates it but it still holds water that's all I needed to do Rag was saying land

I will say that 90% in time you're right land is always a good buy they're not making any more of it that's true they are not making any more of it but they sure tax you out the ass for it yes yes yes so I don't even have like specific items for what is still a good buy

I just have buying advice. Yeah. I would say, yeah, buy secondhand is not a bad option. Do buying used almost always works out in my favor, with very few exceptions. I am a huge proponent for buying dead people stuff. Estate sales. Yeah, because look, the people want it gone. They don't care what they get for it most of the time.

they just care that you will haul it away today dead people shit is way cheaper than live people's stuff because the people selling it probably care less about it than the person that originally bought it i will say that like lately my daughter has developed this thing where she loves to go to thrift shops it's it is they have been ruined not around here oh dude i haven't gotten to that stage yet. Look, I brought that up too. Oops. I'm going to say that like her thing has become going to thrift shops.

She loves to go thrifting for clothes and around here, they actually have fairly nice clothes. Like this is a very, so I live in a fairly affluent high cost of living area. So the stuff that finds this way into goodwill and the thrift shops is still like several orders of magnitude nice. And most of it's never even been worn. It's still got the tags on it. I mean, it's ridiculous. But she enjoys, you know, like with clothes shopping,

she can buy a couple outfits for almost nothing. And it scratches that preteen, like late 90s, early 2000s. I want to go to the mall and hang out with my friends thing, which is just what her and her friends all love to do. Good. And I'm usually going because, like, I'm, so the thrift shop she goes to, there's sections where it's all like old vintage video games and magic cards and stuff like that. And I get to just stroll around and revisit my childhood, but I'm also always on the lookout for, like, that espresso machine that I know damn going to well cost a lot more than they have the tag on for.

And it just needs to come home with me and get some parts put into it in a good cleaning. And then I'm going to have a really nice espresso machine for nothing. Yeah. You know, like I go looking for stuff like that that's like, okay, this is not like, I, okay, within the land of espresso machines, a cheap espresso machine is a few hundred. hundred dollars brand new sure unexpensive one will set you back the cost of a used car they can get

cripplingly expensive and I might talking about anything like gold plate or fancy or anything I'm just talking about a prosumer model will set you back 2,500 to 5 grand and then if you go look at any of the any of the consumer the commercial

grade stuff like the stuff you'd have at your local barista where it has like 10, 15 grand Oh, yeah. Those are, I mean, they're eight grand used. I mean, look at my hobby machine behind me. To get something equivalent of this made brand new right now, you're talking 25 to 30K. Yeah. But like I said, I go to thrift shops because I look for those kinds of things because, like, I would never spend $500 on an entry level of espresso machine or $5,000 on a really nice one.

But I'd probably spend a tenth of that. Right. in a split second yeah so yeah buy second hand by i mean cars second hand underwear second hand's a little ish but i would say most things you buy second hand you know you let somebody else take the hit on the depreciation and knock the newness off of it and you get to swoop in and grab it for a deal yeah you know a great one for that is if you're if you're into u tvs and atvies the depreciation for a two or three year old model it's it's quite astronomical i mean There's something weird I've noticed lately about used boats.

People seem to be asking for absolutely insane money for used ones. Oh, like what? Prices. Yeah. Yeah. My wife says I have to sell the boat, so I have the boat listed for sale prices. Yeah. Every time I hear someone say, no low-balling, I know what I got.

I just say quite a fair in my head. Like, I hope you die still owning this thing. and your spouse sells it for what you told her it costs. Yeah, that's for sure. Got a man, spirited bastard. Hey, you know what? I know what you got too, bud, and it's ain't worth what you think. Those tools are a good one for that, for buying secondhand.

Because there are a lot of tools out there that most people, like guy like me, even though I use them pretty heavily for not a professional, for just a home guy. my tools don't get anywhere near the number of hours on them that that most people do or that professionals do so any tool that i'm getting rid of heck if it got used 10 hours in a year that would be a ton boom firearms firearms firearms are a great one use firearms massively cheaper than new police trade ends Carried often, fired rarely. A little bit of holster rash, whatever. Mine are going to get that anyway. Yep. Repair, free cycle, and up cycle.

So within recent times, my daughter decided she wanted her room made over. She wanted us to get rid of the little kid room, and she wanted a teenager room. And in the process of doing this, she downsized her queen-sized bed into a twin bed, so there'd be room for a couch for when she had friends over. which is actually a futon, but, you know, it was her vibe. She picked out everything. She did everything. Well, in the process of doing all this. That is a reasonable choice.

But in the process of doing all this, I took apart her old queen-sized bed frame that I built from scratch. Because I originally built a queen-sized loft bed. And I overbuilt it slightly because just on the offhand chance, my wife and I and my daughter all wound up in it at the same time, I built it to hold like comfortably 600 pounds Oh yeah That's smart

And then when my dad Especially if it's going to be off the ground And then when my dad looked at it He said Phil I think you I think you slipped a zero in your Straight in your calculations It's fine

No like he thought I overbuilt it There's no built like overbuilt Phil Yeah it was also lag bolted Into the studs of the room That's smart Because I went Dude

I Kids climb all lower over shit they should that loft bed would probably make an interesting engineering experiment because like i i basically i kept going through the exercise of like well you know a couple more studs couldn't hurt and a couple more of those couldn't hurt and then the all the main beams are like two two by sixes glued and screwed together and all the slats are two by fours and it's decked in half inch plywood yeah it was overbuilt like hell but anyway yeah but you know what you never had to take the girl to the ER because you underbuilt the bed. And also, when I disassembled it, I have a pile

of eight foot long. I have a pile of six and eight foot long two by fours and two by six is in the garage. Nice. All with just a handful of screw holes in them. Perfect. That is going to be the that is going to be the mountain everything for the water catch system that I'm putting on the backside of the house. That'll work. Don't need a buy any fricking lumber especially not in modern

lumber prices I got a whole friggin wood pile sitting in the garage just waiting for a weekend

nice that'll work good well for a while it's not treated is it uh no it's not

that may be an issue down by you given the level of moisture yeah I had planned to like put

like standard thing up off the ground like I've got some I got some concrete blocks and everything keep it

so it's not sitting on the ground sure and I figure I'm probably also going to like end up hanging a tarp over the whole thing just to like yeah shed the water I'm trying to keep the wood dry but I hear what you're saying I would recommend anything that is going to be outside if you are not painting it or staining it to go with treated and if you're staining it go with treated anyway yeah because you're you're taking that you're taking your your construction from a five to 10 year lifespan to 10 to 20 year lifespan. It's a pretty significant gain, especially where you are where you don't get frost cycles to kill off the bacteria and the mold in the wood and slow the rot. You're in warm and damp all the time.

Pretty much. Although I did actually have something I built. I built it during COVID. So yeah, that had been about 2020, in 2021, it had just now rotted. And I know for a fact I didn't use treated wood for that because that

was all reclaimed wood from something else. Yeah, it's about four years, so it's not uncommon. I actually think part of it was fence planks, so got away. So, well, those fence planks date back to when we bought the house. Those would have been treated. Yeah, but there was

a bunch of there was also two by fours in there that were not. You'd be surprised. You know, most so most fencing material sold as fencing material is treated you cannot get an untreated option those two by fours weren't from the fence oh okay they were pre-cut studs or something yeah this was this was a bunch of crap wood I had lying around and I just clutch something together but it lasted five years before Rodden fell over well that's all right anyway I would just think if you're going to be bearing the load of the water it'd be wise to go treated it might be but in any case still free cycle upside finding things and repurposing them reclaiming wood whenever you take something apart instead of just throwing it in the trash can

I even go so far even though I know Nick's going to cringe when I say this but I go so far as like I have an entire gallon zip log bag of old deck screws you do know there's such a thing called fatigue failure due to multiple times of torquing something right I understand that.

Okay. I'm not going to explain to you like your child because I figured you understand, but. Oh, I understand. And I understand this is not the preferred method, but no, but if, but when I put them all into a board and I zipped them all right back out, there are plenty, they got plenty enough life left in for a little goofing around bullshit projects. Probably. Probably.

I mean, if it was going to be anything structural, you're not going to use screws anyway. Oh, God, no. Or you're going to use load bearing screws, which are not the same thing. thing is decking screws. Nah. They're way more expensive. Yeah. Yeah.

Although if I was going to do anything, load bearing, I'd also plan all my cuts in such a way that, like, you don't have, the only thing holding the thing up is not the freaking screws. You have, like, wood sitting on top of wood. Well, yeah, you always want to do that.

But there's such a thing, okay, I assume you're familiar with sheer loads. But yes, but you casually say that as if everyone understands that not everybody does well i expect no i i say that because i expect you to understand that you're you're you're one of my people you understand these things now the um judithism he knows these things right it's important we need that no the um the the the concern is like racking loads side load shearing loads um even though all of your wooden structure or maybe sitting on top of other wood and there's no direct load on the screws, the structure's

going to move a little bit all the time. And yeah, Raggle, sheer strength is far greater. I'm thinking you're, I'm not sure what you're referring to on that, but sheer strength of screws is lower than sheer strength on nails. It just, it just is. Unless you're buying the screws rated for that particular task. But this is also why I never used just a fastener. I use fasteners and glue.

The glue is usually stronger than the wood and sometimes stronger than the concrete. Yeah. I mean, you and I've talked through like some of the subwoofer boxes I put together back in the day when I was doing that as a home business. They were aggressive. They were more durable than some roll cages I've seen. I mean, there was one I put together that had four layers of three-quarter-inch MDF for the outer wall. That's a choice. Well, it's a choice when you're trying to secure an 85-pound subwifur.

Well, that has about this much magnet on the back of it. Matter of fact, the front, so the front baffle on that box was four, three-quarter sheets of wood. but the actual normally what you do is you just have like you you basically you cut your outer faces big enough that like the subwifery can kind of like set down into it it's a style choice and then it actually mounts to a single three quarter inch piece of wood I however had trust issues so I made the actual mounting surface an inch and a half thick which then meant you which then meant I had to go and order special bolts to put it in because all the bolts I stock were like an inch and a quarter because they're meant to go through a subwoofer basket and then a three quarter inch thick of you know thick piece of wood so yeah I had to go special order what were they two inch long quarter inch cap screws that you put in with an allen wrench yep but I have a bunch of those behind me yeah that box wound up being a hundred and twenty pounds before you put the subwoofer in it that sounds boring

Yeah. MDF is not, it's not light. It took up most of the back of a GMC jimmy. It was quite impressive. But you know, he wanted to run a DD, what was a DDZ 18, so the biggest freaking subwoo for the digital designs made at the time. Anyway. Okay, just two more things, and these kind of go together. So support small businesses.

And I'm not going to say all small businesses, because some of them are run by. assholes. Yeah. There's this thing where a lot of, like, boutiques and small businesses, they basically just buy crap off Amazon, jack up the price 20%, and then turn around and resell it. I'm not talking about those small businesses. I'm talking about, you know, shameless plug like Rebels Raiders, where it's a dude in his bedroom who is designing. Who refuses to charge me extra money for the backpack I want. We're going to continue to bully him about that. But the point. I won't bully him for that backpack until my backpack shows up. But the point is,

is that, you know, he's, he's a dude in a, in a, in his bedroom. He's designed all this stuff. He's obsessively demanded that the quality be done to his liking. He's, he's thrown, he's yeated his own savings into this effort twice. He is a small business. He's a small business owner. He's a one man. He's a one man army. If he decides tomorrow, screw this. I don't want to do this anymore. The whole business folds. Yep. Those are the kinds of businesses I say support because it's one dude kicking him to his butt. Or it's like Refuge Medical or Medical Gear Outfitters, which is like a husband and wife team. It's all these businesses that are run by people who are in the community who are trying to provide a good product for as good a price as they can manage.

They're small teams. They're usually families or they're run-like families. and their goal is to do the thing. We're not talking as well as possible. Yeah. We're not talking about Condor. We're not talking about cry precision. We're not talking about a big company that has, you know, board members and shareholders and CEOs and all this crap.

If you call the complaint line, you're talking to the dude who's packaging order who's the same one whose name is on the LLC. Those are the business as I say. we ought to all get behind and support the products tend to be higher quality yes businesses like that it's like either either higher quality or lower cost and sometimes both shockingly both sometimes it's pretty impressive what you can do when you're not skimming off the you know the top and the middle and the bottom trying to well when you have an organization that consists of two to three people you have nowhere near the overhead to Barry Costs.

Yep. And that's where I'm going to say personal recommendations, because I'm going to tell you that, you know, I give Nick and the patrons quite a lot of crap, which they deserve mostly. Because they have caused me to, they've caused me to have to smash my piggy bank more than a handful of times.

But I can't ever say if I'm being totally honest and fair to them, that they've ever cajoled me into buying anything that was like crap you know like i bought i bought andrews pbs 14 which is decidedly better than average it okay it anyone who's ever looked through it who knows night vision has been shocked at how good it is it is a really really nice single optic if you had two of these things in a pair of duels people be you know like dragging themselves over broken glass for it it's a really nice optic. I'm not mad about what it cost. I wanted to get into a shotgun. Everybody beating my brains out about looking at a

barretta, if there are 1301 or 8-300. I'm not mad about getting one. It's been a really great shotgun. I have to say, the 300, shockingly good for the price. Yep. I was expecting less. And the STAC, uh, the STAC heck shell cards have been awesome. The scaler works out that Andrew recommend, because he's got the same thing. I was 13. has been absolutely awesome. Hell, I got a recommendation of nobody affiliated with the show or with any y'all, but like someone years ago

had turned me onto Air Socket Defense for their line of flashlights because they're surefire compatible. You kind of build your own and the Malkoff had, like I'd gotten a recommendation for someone that basically said, look, like, if what you're looking at is something like a surefire scout light, you'd really be hard pressed

not to look at aerosocket defense because you can put together as good or better for the same money or less. And I dropped 400 bucks at air socket defense. Now that's with the DS0 or a tail cap, which is

a chunk all by itself, with the Unity Switch, which was another $67, 80 bucks. But just, I mean, I was in at about $2.2.30 for the Malcoff head and the light body. and that's that light i mean you shine it down the street dude it's like turning night into day

it's it's impressively bright i don't believe it but every when i look back on all the things i've plunk down like not inconsequential amounts of money on a lot of it's come from personal recommendations it was friends who had experience with this thing and said hey i think it's worth the money yeah and i say friends like i'm very nervous especially when you start talking about, like, the culture we're in right now with influencers, which sounds hilarious come from guys on the internet, but I don't consider myself being influencer. Really, really don't. I hate the term.

But I think that there's a lot of mistrust of influencers out there, which has been well, well earned at this point, because a lot of them shill bull crap because you're getting a kickback for it. Yeah, they're paid to like things. I'm talking about go to people you trust, go to friends of yours, people you've met in person, and guys you've trained with guys you've you know like go to people who have no financial incentive to lie to you and they don't have an their ego is not tied to the thing because that's the problem you run into where people will say well i love this thing it's the best things is like spread because every time they sell somebody one it makes them feel better about the one they bought

yeah but i you got fooled too yeah but i think if you if you can kind of honor all those things I think you can still find deals out there. I think you can still find opportunities to stretch your dollar. I think you can find ways to to get the things you want and the things you need without fleecing yourself. But I don't know, Nick. Do your due diligence. Yeah. But how do you feel about the Biden, nothing rebellion, man?

Like, is this, is this, is this commie anti-capitalist nonsense or is this like a genuine response? to just the economic situation we're in. I think that it is both. The answer is yes. There are some people that it's the commie nonsense. It's poor me, poor me. I made bad decisions. I want the rest of you to make to make me feel better about it.

So now we're starting this crap. I think that there are a lot of people that spend an inordinate amount of money compared to what they could. And that has a negative impact on their life. And if this gets them to a point where they are comfortable spending less so they can improve their quality of life and spend the money on something that is quality that is going to improve their life, all the better. I mean, it's not buying something because it sucks or it's overpriced is capitalism. Yep. It's capitalism.

buy things with intention i think is is what this is what at least some of the people behind this are trying to get at is spend money intentionally and with thought with forethought and just not just not spending to spend i think that's a good thing that's a good idea it's something me and you both advocate for regularly on this show like yeah prepping can be expensive hobbies can be expensive but if you do your due diligence

you can avoid unnecessary expense and still get the same value I mean me personally I look at I look at the world rounding and I find that I have been unintentionally making that decision over and over and over that really boils down to that's just not worth the money

like we don't go out to eat near as often we don't when we do go out to eat we're not going to go get like fast food or crap because for 10 bucks more you can feed the three of us something halfway decent yeah i find that like yes we're eating more at home because it's healthier for us but we're also eating at home more because like 200 hours worth of groceries replaces 600 dollars worth of eating out every week oh it's probably more than that probably but probably more than 600 but you know i i find I look at the car market and I'm like there's nothing out there for 50 or 60 grand that I think is going to make me feel better than this old truck that's paid off. I look at the economy that we're in and I look at the things around me and I continue to come to an in a scalable conclusion that I am making a judgment call on what I do and don't spend money on and 99 times out of 100 the answer to the equation is not, oh, I can't.

can't afford that right not a brag not even a humble brag i'm a big boy i save my money i can afford most things i want look the reason i don't have a 330 lupu magnum in my house is not because i can't go dump several thousand dollars at will to go get one tomorrow but the problem is i go through that cost benefit analysis of it's this much money it takes it out of savings or it takes it out of this and is it is the money better spent put it here versus there am i going to get a thousand dollars worth of fun out of this thing or am i going to shoot it twice and then put it in you know put it in the safe it's that it's that argument i have with myself every time about is the juice worth the squeeze and i would like to think that there's a segment of this population

that is saying no it's not and good yeah that's fantastic perfect they're making an educated choice and and i cannot do anything other than applaud them yep and all i can say in response to that is is that you know to to the merchants figure out how to get your prices lower or your quality up or sell better wares that people are more interested in buying because what you're selling they're not buying anymore and that should that should concern you to the auto manufacturing at work to the auto manufacturers your vehicles are sitting on the lot an average of 350 days before they get sold that is a catastrophe in your industry because no one wants to buy your cars because they are horribly overpriced and they're breaking down all the time i did not realize

they're sitting 350 days oh yeah uh chrysler is leading the charge with that that's bad yeah that's really bad i think toyta is like the one manufacturer that still has a reasonable days on lot but even theirs is up from what it used to be 350 days yeah they've got that's an entire model year

just about to the point where to the point where there are some vehicles that they're having to turn around and go into the shop immediately upon purchase because things like you know the coolant has sat too long

and it's starting to corrode the inside of the blog so it needs a coolant flush or oh, it needs this flush or needs that flush or it needs a detail because it's sat out in the sun for a year straight. Interesting. Yeah. We could, dude, we could talk a whole, we could talk cars for a whole episode all by itself. I did not know that. That's concerning from an economic standpoint.

I mean, it's concerning for the dealerships because they're buying all this. They're filling their floor plan on credit. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Anyway, there was actually one Chrysler dealership that there was a clause in their contract with Chrysler that said that, like, basically, if they folded up the dealership that Chrysler had to purchase all the cars back from them, Chrysler tried to renege on it. They shut down the dealership. Now, this dealership owned, like, several different dealerships. Sure, they shut on their least profitable one.

They shut down. The Chrysler one, because they couldn't move any cars. and then they re-hired all those people, the whole staff at other dealerships. Like, no one, no one went that job. But they went to Chrysler and said, hey, take all these cars back. Chrysler fought them on it. I'll bet they did. A judge.

It was probably a few million dollars in cars anyway. Oh, it was. A judge wound up having to tell them, suck it up. This is your contract. Good. Yeah. Anyway, contracts sometimes are enforceable people. Yeah, where was I?

Oh, I mean, that's just all I could say, you know, to the creditors, when everybody says your interest rates are too high to, to the employers, when people don't want to show up to work because you're paying crap wages or your work life balance is terrible. Like, welcome to capitalism, everybody. It doesn't just affect us. It affects everybody. So if no one's buying your stuff, there's a lesson to be learned there. And if no one's showing up to work when you put out a help wanted sign, there's a lesson to be learned there. and for God's sakes please stop spending money like children and when the money when the money don't make sense just stop

buying it I'm not saying buy nothing and I'm not even saying rebel I'm just saying quit being an idiot just do your due diligence buy intentional yep all right

anything else to chuck in here or have we have we turned an entire topic out of a relatively simple discussion yet again. Oh, we can do that with just about anything. Yeah. Okay. Well, we'll sew this up.

It's 9.18 at night. I've got a nice early rise in the morning. I'm sure Nick does too. For the listeners, thank you all for following along with us. Thanks for those of you who watch the stream. If you have topics or if you have questions or you have something you want to to cover, no raggle.

You cannot borrow my night vision. Go buy your own. and then we can be nerds together. Then you should leave a comment or you should reach out to us and we will turn a discussion into it. But you have to let me know if front, is it a coffee conversation or a whiskey conversation? Because those are two very different conversations. They are. And we will come equipped for either one, sometimes both.

Both is dangerous. Both is fun? Funny dangerous. Yes. All right. Matter of fact, it's going to have the door. Good night, y'all. Good night.

You're going to be able to be.