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Comment by 999900000999 | Hacker News Reader

Life advice, self help, etc, all of it is too general to be helpful to anyone.

What works for a 46 year old married mother of 3 probably won't be what works for a 23 year old tech nerd.

You have this obsession with becoming some type of super human who can do things vastly beyond your peers.

Sure the average 30 year old living in LA will never buy a home.

That doesn't concern you super elite hustle bro. Hustle so hard you have 3 houses, 2 lifted trucks, and a dog who can speak basic French.

Most of us are by definition average. Actual life advice for our above character would be to move somewhere with affordable housing, only buy a lifted truck if you have cash, etc.

No body wants to read.

"Fix your life over 18 to 24 months by making difficult choices"

People want.

"Fix your life in 3 weeks, only takes 30 minutes a day"

View on HN

Such a good point. How do I calibrate to the all the advice out there? Find that hard - be it finance advice, health advice, hustle advice or anything else.

Like you say, most of us are average. There's rarely any content for a '46 year old married mother of 3' or any of the average folks. But a normal person's daily life goes for a toss when they hear advice on YT (or watch a Insta reel or a TikTok dance) they know they won't be able to do themselves but they think should be doing.

You keep saying "lifted truck" like it's something to aspire to, but aren't pickups dirt cheap in the US?

New pick ups are pretty expensive, at least from my perspective. A baseline F150 starts at 40k-ish. A decked out one could run you near double that I believe.

Compare to a baseline Civic at around 23k.

Wow. People are really paying $80k for an F-150?

Every time I think I can't get any more cynical, life throws a curveball like that.

wait til you hear about the waitlist for the F-150 Lightning...

Many pickup trucks in the US are basically luxury vehicles akin to a high end Mercedes or BMW.

I worked with a guy who spent $55k on a new truck. We were both making $18 an hour. He was in his early 20s living with his parents.

That was in 2017… I wonder if he’s still paying it off.

Was this in LA by any chance?

I recall making $10 an hour and having a manager berate me for not owning a personal vehicle.

And it was a temp job!

A long time ago, just about the time short after the 9/11 attack i joined the german army. In my platoon there was a guy my age who drove a f...ing Dodge Viper.

You need to know, german conscripts were not really well paid back then, so it totally baffled me, especially after hearing that his family is from a blue collar background.

It turned out, that crazy guy somehow convinced a bank to give him enough credit to pay the deposit so he could get the credit from the dealer... and after this, every month his whole pay went into the payment of the credit(s) and the fuel.

People do... crazy stuff

I bought a new F-150, XL edition (lowest) in 2020 for 29k, just for reference. On the Ford site, it appears the new models at a similar trim level are about 31k. Most people don't buy the baseline "work truck," which is what mine is (4x2, 3.3L, 8ft bed, short cab), but they don't have to be 40k. Add 4x4 and any level of trim and you're there, though.

that is pretty cheap, compared to europe after all taxes... 31k gets you fake SUV on sedan platform, not F150

For what it's worth, what I would call the "fake SUV" from Ford (the Escape) is listed starting @27k. The Explorer, you might call a real SUV, starts @35k.

God no. Even before the recent huge bump in car prices.

They're very common, but not cheap.

They're either actual work trucks built to do real work (so, not cheap) or are status symbols (so burning cash is part of the point—also not cheap).

Like with anything, you can save buying used, but I don't see very many older trucks around these days. Dunno if a lot got taken off the roads with Cash for Clunkers, or if rising gas prices made older trucks less appealing so a bunch got scrapped, or what. Seems like most trucks I used to see were older, but since they got more popular for normal drivers, even one visibly 7-8 model years old is pretty unusual. Less so out in the sticks, but near the city, it's almost all fairly-new trucks.

The people who really want to show off can get trucks that approach six figures, retail. Not some custom job, that's in-demand enough that it's a normal trim level they make.

Any extra stuff done to a truck after purchase is sometimes about functionality but most cases you see will be conspicuous consumption instead, including lift kits. Tons of them are on trucks that'll rarely leave pavement—they're the same as fancy, expensive rims or whatever.

[EDIT] Cheap (relatively cheap, anyway) light trucks used to be a thing, like in the 90s and earlier, but are damn near not made at all, anymore.

Do you mind pointing me in the direction of these dirt cheap trucks? I’ve been looking but have so far come up empty.

>"Fix your life in 3 weeks, only takes 30 minutes a day"

More like "This ONE Tip Will Change Your Life!"

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