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0067 — Roast Beef in, An Unexpected Check

🕑 Added 2024-05-31 17:00:10 +0000 UTC

Comments

Douglas Wykstra

Agreed, though with Ray I think it's more that he's never worried a day in his life about something as trivial as "how much a car costs." On the other end of the spectrum, Lyle doesn't understand the concept of doing anything other than buying four Datsun 280Zs from a scrapyard and wrenching them into a single functional car. Mr. Bear on a good day will keep your average car dealer well in hand with the steely look and the sharp phrase, but his British nature will inevitably lead him to fix on a car that will have three important systems malfunction the second it gets off the lot. Much as I hate to remind people of bad SNL movies... it's Pat. Which goes a long way to explaining why Beef would rather just get rolled by the dealer and feel bad about it the rest of his life.

AzureSP

So then who's the right friend to help Beef with this? Definitely not Ray... he's gonna get flattered and rolled by any salesperson. And we've recently seen how big a sucker Teo is.

George Cordes

I love car shopping but the sales reps always size me up and walk away. That's why I am forced to rely on private party sales.

Corrine Bredin

This right here is the play.

Douglas Wykstra

Anyone who feels the way Roast Beef feels about buying a car, canvass your friends and inform them of your insecurity. There's likely to be at least one hard-charger among them who will happily accompany you to the dealership and treat the dealer like a local politician who just tried to go through airport security with a brick of heroin in his carry-on. It's no big deal to the friend; confrontation is how he gets his blood pumping on the weekends and you just spared him an afternoon of trolling Twitter and/or trying to strongarm a fast food employee into giving him a free upsize. He is not the best person, but he is your friend, and he's going to get you a good deal on a car. The only downside is that he will force you to walk off the lot at least once.

Douglas Wykstra

Just keep buying that Vanguard Total Stock Index until your balance hits six figures, then it's worth going to check with somebody about diversifying. Index fund is basically just an inflation-proof* savings account with the lowest fees you'll find anywhere. *It's not stagflation-proof, but that's a much less usual thing to happen.

Brerlapn

A few years back I was talking to my brother's next door neighbor. The guy lived in a very comfortably-sized house, had an Audi S8 in the driveway, and had just ridden up on a nice BMW cross-country motorcycle. I mentioned that I had been eyeing an older BWW bike for a while but it was hard to justify the cost for what was basically a toy for me. He chuckled and said, 'well this is just to get me to the local airport' where he had a private plane that he'd just flown back from visiting his brother a couple hundred miles away. He said, 'I grew up dirt-poor and was really frugal like that for a long time, until at some point after moving up the career ladder I realized that I had gotten to a point where I won't have to worry about money anymore. So now I have toys.' The thing that struck me about the conversation wasn't his nice array of toys but that it had never once in my life crossed my mind that there was a state of consciousness of 'not having to worry about money anymore'.

Chris Onstad

I have a rusted out 77 Datsun pickup for odd jobs. Every man seems to consider it an obligatory mark of masculine acknowledgement to ask it’s for sale.

Erik Chipchase

btw I have a old Toyota Tacoma with rust on the body & mold on the camper shell. But everywhere I go, guys ask if I want to sell it. Like having a status object for for people I respect.

Erik Chipchase

Dang! This hits a nerve!

Datura

the best way to buy a car you don't need and can't afford is on that sweet sweet credit. what's the worst that could happen???

Alexander Rediger

You just want him to win, but also understand his choices.

Earl Hickey

Keep the Subaru as long as it'll run. Modern cars are assembled by poorly supervised children out of an amalgam of recycled iPhones.

2scrogz

"Dear Onstad, please stop giving Wall Street new ideas for terrible financial derivatives products that will surely destroy the economy worse than a handful of companies shitting the bed with the lights on. Sincerely, the American working class"

2scrogz

"...floating-point APR chaos-blend annuity balloons... WAIT THAT'S FUCKING GENIUS!!!" -some coked-out, entry-level trader at a hedge fund, whose money - which is actually somebody else's money - is about to be "away from them," probably, about 6-12 months before becoming "seriously dong-razzled."

Jacquelyn R Walters

Leading to brain struggles of their own

J Hardy Carroll

one thing about being poor for most of your life is that when you have money you tend to spend it in a big hurry on stupid shit as though it's going to somehow catch on fire if you don't do this. I now work a job that pays me more than I've ever made in my life and I still managed to outspend my check.

GruntyGinMan

A couple of years back in...I want to say 22 I was on the hunt for a Ridgeline, and a local dealership had a lightly used '19 with less than 17k miles on it. Knowing how batshit insane the market was at the time I went in, look at it, took it for a test drive, and asked what the asking was. He flipped his monitor around and pointed at the listing on autotrader "plus doc fees and tax, doc fees will be $800". Listing was a bit less than what KBB claimed it should be so I took it. Oddly, it was the absolute best experience I had ever had buying a car. While we were waiting around the salesman who looked like a Hispanic George Clooney was pointing at a total of five vehicles out front "those are the only new vehicles we got that are not allocated to people who ordered them. There really are people who will come in and insist on buying a Telluride right off the lot and with the way surcharges are going with those and how they often have crappy credit, they probably end up spending north 100 large on one by the time it's paid off." He reiterated that people who ordered from them got MSRP or a bit under MSRP, and they had been fairly surprised anyone came in for the Ridgeline, which surprised ME because I think that's about all the truck you need. That's it that's the story the end no moral

Oppido

I was going to say that Beef should consult the scratch-havers in his life for advice, but that would lead him to Ray. Though I suppose Beef could still extract useful advice in the form of "do the opposite of what Ray says."

Eli Parker

"Nobody in my family knew why they called it benjamins" is a very good and memorable line.

Zen Window

while my ship hasnt come in i am approaching comfort for the first time in my life financially speaking also for the first time in my life not coincidentally a major auto manufacturer is starting assembly on a new vehicle built to my specification next week ive never had a new car before its quite possible i may never make that multi thousand dollar drive off a lot ever again because fuuuuuuck that immediate depreciation noise but i had to do it at least once also if i can keep dumping money into it at the rate i have been toward the down payment the bank is going to get hilariously little interest out of me

bird

For most people, buying a car is as much an impulse purchase as having a child. Sometimes with the same ramifications.

Tim Pratt

Too real. I got a decent chunk of unnecessary money for the first time in my life some years back and had to ask some generational-wealth-having friends, "What should I... uh... do with this" and I learned a lot, including about index funds, starting with the knowledge that there are things called index funds

Nicholas Williams

My wife and I were going to buy a new car a few weeks ago and I wondered aloud whether any car salesmen were women these days, because I also was in absolute terror of some 30 year old putting green Sinatra fan and his Jimmy Johns detritus. We arrived at the dealership and the first person to approach us was straight up a polite young woman with zero MAGA energy. I manifested that shit! Anyway, it still took three goddamned days to buy a car even though we knew the one that we wanted.

Ryan Boyle

There's a Mad Men line that stayed with me. Betty (grew up wealthy) says to Don (grew up poor and tried to hide his past): "I see how you are with money. You don't understand it." This was around the time we saw he had a desk drawer full of large bills.

Matthew Harris

Where I am it's Friday evening and that's already the weekend.

Jonathan

I keep so many boxes and bags and junk

Jonathan

Also a "social anxiety" thing, but the book I'm reading suggests that they are kind of the same disease.

Jonathan

I was scared of all this, so I just went to Hertz and bought a no-haggle used rental car, and it's been completely fine for the 6 years I've owned it.

Michael Akey

Car ceiling fan is a hella good idea though

b.zap

Hell is kind of a weird place

Chris Onstad

Onion odor is automatic buyer leverage, weird but true

Chris Onstad

As a cartoonist, this is a very affordable technique

Ismini Roller

So so good. I feel ya Beef

Nicholas Joliat

I hope David Lynch has a ceiling fan in his car (with enough clearance that it doesn’t chop his hair off of course)

Oppido

I just want to note that I really like the background shading in the final panels mirroring Beef's descent into Chagrin.

A. Hamster

I think there’s a generation gap, my thought is, “I wouldn’t buy a car now because I don’t want one more bill”, versus my 80-year-old neighbor, who casually mentions that she paid in cash for her condominium.

Jeremy Wright

Something I experienced at a "professional" job, co-workers talking casually about past expenditures and foreign vacations in their youth that were just downright alien to my latchkey childhood. You never feel at home around these people, they may as well be another species.

Don Rowe

See, that's exactly what I did when I bought my car--found the EXACT vehicle, went to the dealership, drove around a bit in it, and the guy STILL tried to scuzz me on it.

A. Hamster

Still, though, I would have found out if “quack like a duck” was on the table

Chris Onstad

In the late 60s, automotive ceiling fans were briefly the rage, until the driver kept getting clipped in the back of the head

Chris Onstad

I guess it would be more like voles, but rats was more lyrical

Josh Egbert

all keeping boxes cause they're the good kind and I'll use em later maybe

Julie (HiDeeHoGal)

When the salesman stifles a burp but you can still smell the onions from his Jersey Mike's Italian lunch.

Chris Onstad

That's not the only way to face a situation? Tell me more...

TacoAvenger

Oh man hurts

Chris Onstad

all cutting the toothpaste tube open to get the rest

Julie (HiDeeHoGal)

My immediate thought too. I might spend or even invest what money I have now wisely, but I still dither over big brand vs store brand snacks.

Chris Onstad

enter, a lame little Subaru hatch back, forever

Chris Onstad

I think there's some handsome overlap, but I don't think you or I really need to electively plumb those depths, given that it's nearly the weekend.

Mrbimbin

I figured out the ceiling fan thing, but it did take a second.

Jacquelyn R Walters

Thank you for explaining about the broken ceiling fan. It's been a long week and my brain was struggling with that concept!

Walter Cooke

Ah yes, the 'rats on the neck at buried alive sleep away camp' feeling. I remember it from my childhood like it was yesterday morning...

EndgamerAzari

Extremely relatable; Reflexively delving into/outright inventing the downsides of a positive situation is a brain-scramble I cook up on the regular.

Elyse

When my husband and I bought our first new-to-us car together, we only went to the dealership once we knew exactly what we wanted, knew the price, had our money ready, so we took one test drive and went “yeah we’ll take it” The salesmen were obviously pleased but also seemed disappointed they didn’t have to ask what they had to do to put us in this Subaru today

Daniel Pearson

Ooooofffff. Hard identify, Beefo.

Josh Egbert

If you were a poor kid who *knew* you were a poor kid, there's no amount of money in the world that will ever change that feeling about yourself.

Rob Satterfield

Car shopping is a fuck you friday, everyday

Matthew Harris

I feel like this is more of a "the depression" thing than a "never having money and not understanding the world of people who have" thing, but then both conditions also apply to me so I don't really have any way of knowing