u/SmoothMarionberry551

I live in a neighborhood in the Midwest where the houses are close together. Maybe 10 feet apart. A couple weeks ago, the house next-door that’s been rented out, caught on fire. It was a good fire that basically burned 3/4 of the house. It also set the house under left on fire as well and did a good amount of damage to that house. My house is on the right. Thank God when the fire department came the first thing they did was hose down the side of my house that was starting to catch and stopped the fire from spreading.

We did get some damage, including cracked and melted windows and trim. Siding is burnt and warped all along the side of the house. The roof that’s literally three weeks old Looks like it was burned on the edges and some other small bits and pieces here like a damaged stain glass window that I’m sad about. I called my insurance (Statefarm)and filed a claim and they out from big name company to do an estimate today so I’m waiting on that. But I also saw it in the mail today that I got a letter from a law firm. Apparently the law firm was retained by my neighbors house Insurance, which is Erie. They’re saying they want to come to a joint inspection on the house and blah blah. Is that normal? Should I have to worry about anything? Do I push to have State Farm send somebody out as well?

I also learned today that the sad part is that this fire probably could’ve been avoided. From what I understand from my neighbor, when the fire started on the first floor instead of calling fire department, the tenant got scared because they are either undocumented or green card holders or something like that I don’t know. Another neighbor called the owner and told him “hey your house is on fire” and he from the other side of town called the fire department and police and sent them to the house but by then the house was already half engulfed.

Any insight or tips on how this needs to be approached or things I should know it would be very helpful.

Looking at purchasing in the next couple days and now I’m torn. As specifically looking at the Laramie’s because I wanted the leather interior and the ventilated seats. After three days of searching and finding the one I wanted in forged blue metallic, another dealer mentioned that the rebels come with optional leather seating, which I did not know. There’s also slightly bigger rebate so rebel ends up being $3000 cheaper for me. The rebel’s missing the power side steps and has the hurricane, but it comes with the hands-free driving system as well as a 360 camera. The Laramie comes with hemi, the side steps. But doesn’t have the hands-free driving or the 360 camera.

What do you guys think? If it was your choice, which would you go and why. Also, in all honesty and bias aside. Do you guys think that these are actually reliable enough to not have to worry. Like if I decided to keep it for 7 to 8 years and 120k plus miles. I’m sure there will be maintenance like brakes, oil changes, fluid, swaps, and all that good stuff. But I’m wondering about random stuff that breaks. I’m accustomed to Japanese cars where even my 2013 CVT Altima hasn’t blinked at 240k miles. My only other vehicle from these brands was my grand Cherokee, but that was a WJ and it rotted out while the engine was still purring at 245k

I have a 2014 535 with an intermittent key issue. About 50% of the time when I get in the car, it says key not detected. I have to hold the key to the steering column to get it to start. remote has brand new battery. I went so far as to buying a new key fob because I only had one. Almost $1000 later and it still does the same thing. So that means that something is actually wrong with the car not the fob. Any ideas? The car does have comfort access.

Just picked up a 26 Limited Reserve after two days of looking and phone calls.

Diamond black pearl coat, finishing pack by mopar. Tow package.

MSRP: $55330
Rebate: $4500
Dealer discount: $5830

Total off $10330

Paid $45000 with no add ons. Did not purchase any warranties or anything as it’ll be gone before powertrain is up.

I called maybe 10 places in the northern Illinois area. Got a lot of come on down blah blah. First dealer I went to, the one I came to see apparently manager took it home that day. Come to find out he’s been using it. It also apparently had 2500 miles. To add insult to injury they offered only $500 bucks off what we agreed on (total 9600 off) to adjust for miles. Nope. They offered to match that discount on one on their lot but I refused out or principle of wasting my time. Another dealer called me back and said if I took one tonight theyd give me the $10300 off I was looking for. I was there in 20 min.

Overall happy I think I did well but thanks to you guys for aiming me in the right discount direction!

Looking to possibly pick up a 2011 Outdoorsman Crew cab 5.7 hemi with 133K miles today. It is at an auction and their buy now price is $6700 and OTD would be a bit under $8K. I can bid at the auction and could probably get it for $6500-7000 OTD. I have bought from this auction 6 times before (some were a grand Cherokee, golf, scion tc, honda fit) and all cars have been as expected with no real issues. Also comes with a 100 Mile powertrain warranty just to make sure it runs and shifts normal. I am considering it because I want to try my shot at this side hustle I have in mind and need the bed. My brain tells me cheap truck for now to see if this idea works out. If not, I'm not super screwed.

Do you guys thinks this is a good grab for the price as long as it checks out? Clean carfax, always dealer serviced and new tires put on 2k miles ago. Body looks good from what i saw and interior is 8/10 with the full center console. I know to look out for lifter/manifold issues, electrical issues and rust. Anything else?

Thanks!

Randomly saw this video pop up and that it was interesting. He did a 50 mile loop twice on the same day with the same parameters on backroads it looks like. His average efficiency went up by 5% ish with these. I haven’t seen many actual reviews on these so this was kind of nice and I thought I’d share it. Also somehow his Juniper already has over 40k miles 🤣. If it does get you a solid 5% like he says, that’s be like what another 12-16 miles of range (rough math)

Kind of looking to get a different perspective or make sure that my numbers make sense on the situation that I’m dealing with.

I have a current car loan for BMW X5 that I love. It’s a fantastic car that loves to shit value. I’m currently about $10,000 underwater on the car loan and I have 45 months left. I’m not worried because I make slightly bigger payments anyway, as well as I’m sure the value will even out. My monthly payments are $1003 a month at 4.81%. I can comfortably keep making these payments. Normally, I’ve been paying $12-$1400 a month to make it end quicker. My insurance is $207 a month and I spent $350 a month in gas.

Up until a month ago, I had about $70,000 in liquid cash savings. Some unforeseen circumstances happened and I had to take care of some financial needs with family and parents. That 70,000 got wiped down to about 15,000.

I have a Roth and investment accounts through work and stuff like that, but I don’t wanna touch any of that. The 70k I had was a mix of cash, savings and stocks that I sold in stuff like Tesla and other companies. I’m also 29 years old if that matters.

I take home pay is a minimum of $8000 a month but can be 10,000 if I can snag some overtime here and there. My recurring bills including gas insurance and stuff come out to about $5000. My monthly car ownership expenses are about $1560 of that.

Here’s my question. I was crunching some numbers and if I swap out my x5 for a model Y, I think I would save some money. If I put 5K down and finance the other 5K as part of the negative equity, which I don’t think will be a problem, my car payment itself would be around $665 plus my insurance agent said it would be $160 for Insurance and my apartment charges a flat rate of $40 a month to charge your car in our own personal stall, so I will always have access to the charging. That brings my total to around $865 a month versus the $1560 a month I pay right now. I could save almost $700 a month by swapping the cars.

I wouldn’t say that amount is life-changing, but lowering my expenses always helps to rebuild. And also compared long-term value overtime, I would lose way less money owning model Y than the X5. I love the X5 though. If that car is a 10 out of 10 in my eyes, the model y is an 8 out of 10. Would you guys personally give up a car that you love and get a car while you’re OK with owning if It meant you save that much money? I will say when I bought the X5 at Cross shopped it with the model Y, but I just preferred the luxury over the efficiency at the time especially since I had a nice financial cushion. I can afford to keep making the car payments over time. It just makes me uncomfy knowing I don’t have that much cash on hand anymore. I would only also do this with a model Y. I wouldn’t get a cheaper car because I drive 20k miles a year and I need something safe, reliable and spacious. I also don’t wanna put the full 10K down because then it wipes my savings even more. I could wait it out until the negative equity is zeroed out for my loan payments, but that could take a year and a half based on my math and I think I would lose more than value and trade and stuff like that.

I currently daily a bmw x5 plug-in hybrid that gives me about 35-40 miles a charge during the summer and about 30 during the winter. Drops down to about 25 in the below zero deep freezes we get in Wisconsin and if I “remote start”. BMW rates this car new from factory with 31 miles but I consistently blow past that. My average m/kwh is 2.4-2.5 summer and 1.7-2.0 in the winter. I charge at my apartment on level 1 for a $20 flat rate and normally it sits for about 8-9 hours charging before I take the car and start my day. I do about 30 miles a day driving. On weekends I do a longer drive which is 100 miles each way.

I’m heavily considering a $30k model y. 21/22 model year long range. I see those hovering with around 30-40k miles. I did some math and doing so would drop my car related expenses about $700-750 a month (loan cost, gas and insurance). I can afford the bmw but it seems I’m pissing away money especially since I’m not too happy that the rear seats are kinda tight on leg room. I’m just wondering if people in the Midwest are really losing 30/40% range in the winter. Couple of my coworkers are saying they get 180-200 miles of range in the winter. Is it really that big of a deal? Does winter preconditioning bring the battery charge speed up to snuff compared to the summer speeds?

I’m am beyond livid right now. I booked a awd intermediate suv A MONTH AGO.

I come in today and they don’t have a car at first, but make me wait and finally pop up with a Mazda cx50 for me. Cool. I take it and make it five miles before it goes into some sort of limp mode, and the dash lights up. I limp it back to them. They apologize but don’t have a replacement other than a Sentra. I take it. I’m driving 6k miles around the country for three weeks so I wanted an suv but I said I’d make do. I did call other locations with them and no one had any available suvs.

I get the Sentra on the highway and at 70 it shakes and pulls to the right. I suck it up. While filling up a few hundred miles away from where I got it, I notice that it has four different brand tires on it with varying tread. One tire on the side it pulls to has uneven wear. The outside of the tire looks okay but the inside was showing some metal wire or something. Could be the cause of the pull but idk. I stop at an airport location after being directed by enterprise people over the phone to swap cars. While there, the guys come and say the car has five spots of hail damage. Where? On the roof. Tiny little pinky sized dents in the metal they had to use this circle mirror thing to see. My city had hail a month ago. Somehow apparently it’s my fault and they make my sign some little slip saying it might come back to me. At this point I don’t give a shit and will let my chase credit cards insurance deal with that.

They swap me out for a wagoneer and didn’t charge me the difference so I was fine with it. I get on the highway and immediately it shakes worse than the Sentra at 70mph. I recorded my drink shaking and showed them since I assumed they would not even care to take it out for a drive. They just hand me a different wagoneer. Guess what? Same issue. Shits shaking on the fucking highway. Seat shakes. My leg through the gas pedal. This one also pulls to the right hard. Im currently sitting at tires plus getting an alignment and wheel balance done. They also showed me that this wagoneer has three different brand and tread depth tires. One front one is new new with paint marks, other front one is at 4/32 one rear one is at 8mm and the other is at 4mm.

Im done with enterprise. Im not a picky person I just want a safe car to drive. Why is this so hard. How are these cars not being inspected prior to handing them out? I don’t have time to meep running back every five seconds to swap cars. This is a joke. I’ve never ever had issues like this with them!