(Listen to the audio version of this essay.)
At the end of July, I closed on the refinances of two properties, my condo and a rental. My interest rate on both were higher than the historic lows we’ve been seeing from the past year due to COVID, and my dad had been occasionally mentioning it and prompting me to refinance. The friends I had flippantly mentioned it to also presented me with annoying unsolicited advice. They urged me to do the same. I resent it when people tell me what to do, so I think subconsciously I dragged my feet to spite them. And after dragging my feet on it for about six months, I refinanced my shit and started up new two 15-year loans on autopilot. I called it done and was glad I didn’t have to think about this stuff for like, at least another few years.
During this time — you know, the end of July (and I don’t even know why I’m talking about it like it was so long ago when it was literally just a month ago — but you know, it actually feels like a long time ago) — I was pretty obsessed with mentally and emotionally and even actively shopping around for a new car. I currently drive a 2008 Honda Civic, and it’s been awesome. I’m not a flashy person so a Civic from 2008, with a dent in the back from the time I backed into my parents mailbox and didn’t tell them about it because the mailbox wrought more damage on my car than my car did it, is totally my speed.
But lately, it’s been not as dependable — honestly due to my own negligence. Like, it doesn’t start up predictably when I leave the overhead light on overnight and drain the battery. And after years of being lackadaisical about maintaining it, stuff like my AC and my starter needed repair or replacing. I started looking at these things — and all of the accumulated grease and coffee stains from my near-daily ritual of eating in my car as I drive somewhere — and I started suggesting to myself, “Stace, maybe it’s time for you to get a new car. Like, you can afford it.”
I’m not a flashy person, so it sometimes takes a lot for me to make big purchases — because I don’t feel like I need things as much as other people feel like they need things. I think this is some oblique psychological rebellion against my upbringing and the way my folks push so hard for financial success and equate money to worthiness. I think there’s a part of me that likes to try and freak my parents out by letting them think I’m skirting a razor-thin edge that can tip into ruin and homelessness and poverty and failure at any moment — to teach them a lesson about the things they value too much.
I put off buying a new car for a long time because cars don’t really do anything for me, emotionally. My car was working fine — and I didn’t want to transmit that kind of ‘worthiness’ out into the world.
Anyway, so I started looking at fucking expensive-ass-to-me cars. They were expensive because, for years, I have been joking with my siblings — telling them that my next car will run on water (like, that’s how far out I am from buying a new car). But since there’s no car that runs on water right now that’s within my reach, I started looking at hybrids, plug-in electric hybrids, and straight up electric cars. I really didn’t want a hybrid because that feels like under-committing (to the environment) but I also don’t have garage space at all at my condo, so I can’t easily charge an electric car. (Are you seeing where this is going?)
My sister suggested that I look at Teslas ‘cause they are affordable-for-middle-class-people now, probably for their fast-charging abilities so that I could charge at public stations — and probably for the swag. And I rejected Teslas outright because of the swag, and because I really don’t like Elon Musk and hate how tech-bros idolize him. I hate tech-bros, I can’t look successful to my parents, I’m not a flashy person — ergo I can’t buy a Tesla, man.
I spent a lot of time test-driving or trying to test-drive PHEVs like the Toyota Prius Prime and the Honda Clarity. The Clarity has a great electric range, but Honda discontinued it because no one gives enough of a shit about this car and Honda probably also needs to reexamine what it thinks it’s doing with its life — so it was hard as fuck to find a 2021 or 2020 Clarity to buy. I contacted a bunch of dealerships, and I regret that because now they have my number and dudes being manipulatively friendly keep calling me and asking me if I have found a new ride yet, and I just want them to leave me alone, God.
And also this doubt started to creep into my mind — like, why am I even working so hard to buy a PHEV, this in-betweener technology that is probably going to die in the next decade if not sooner. I started asking myself if I’m like, one of those people in the 90s that went all-in on LaserDisc players and LaserDisc karaoke machines (aka my parents) — like, am I being this person right now? Does Honda know something I do not?
And then in the 50th hour of watching the 1000th YouTube video about energy efficient cars, I stumbled upon a video about this soon-to-be-released beauty (I am showing her from the back because that’s her best side):
And I was like, “OMG! THIS IS THE CAR! SPECS? I DON’T CARE ABOUT SPECS! LOOK AT THE DEZINE THO! OMG! HOW MUCH DOES IT COST? YOU KNOW WHAT I DON’T CARE!”
The Ioniq 5 isn’t out yet. It’s due out in fall for prob prime markets like Cali. And then it will prob be avail in Washington state more toward the end of the year or maybe early next year. No idea how much it costs, but probably over $45,000 for the base model? (I say that as a person with no expertise on cars at all.)
Guys, the Ioniq 5 is totally an electric car with a range of about 300 miles and a fast charge time (at public stations, and the right kind of public stations) of maybe 18 minutes to get it to 80 percent charged.
I started telling myself, “Hey, you could inconvenience yourself by hanging out at a public station for 20 minutes each week for this car. You could do that!”
I also told myself I could install a not-that-fast charging station at my parents’ house and then charge there (because it would be cheaper in the long run), but also that would require spending like six hours there every week — and decided, WTF that is a dumb idea.
I contacted my HOA at my condo and asked them if they would install a charging station just for me. They said no. And I was like, “Oh, okay, so you just hate the environment?”
I’m kidding. I didn’t say that to them. I just thought it.
So without much of a plan in place, I put down $100 for the privilege of getting emails from Hyundai about this car (it’s a car reservation fee or something like that). I committed to this car and told myself I’ll figure out the deets later.
And then I started telling my friends about this car because I was so excited about it. I had to constantly fess up about the inconvenience of charging it because I feel like they should know these details so that their excitement about me getting a new car (finally) would be appropriately tempered.
My friend Michelle asked me how much the car costs at one point. I said, “I have no idea. But probably around $45,000, based on what I read on message boards.”
And she was like, “Oh my God, so you’re buying a luxury car?”
And she wasn’t judgmental about it — more gleeful because she’s one of those weirdos that has a fetish for women being the bosses of their lives — but I still responded with something like, “Man, no! Your mom’s a luxury car! I am not that person you have in your head right now! It’s a freaking Hyundai!”
We were walking around the parking lot of a mall at the time. And I remember, as we were waiting for the crosswalk light to turn white, I said to her, “It would be funny if I bought an entire house with a garage just to charge this car in.” I shook my head immediately and said, “Nah, that’s completely ridiculous.”
I made that joke a lot with people. I made that joke with my brother and sister. I made that joke multiple times with multiple friends. I started to tack on, “It would be an incredible bit of performance art though, if I did that. It would be the story of this car, and the story of a hypothetical house.”
So my personality is such that I’m not a big planner. I’m pretty process and efficiency-obsessed, but I hate the prescriptive feeling of planning. So I don’t plan out my business that much. I don’t plan out my life that much. I don’t have these benchmarks or deadlines for achievement where I have to do X by such date.
I do nearly all things based on feel — like, intuition and gut-feeling. My intuition will move me toward a decision, and then my brain will obsessively put the decision through a rigorous stress test, so outwardly, my decisions always look so deliberate and not that impulsive. But I think I’m secretly actually very impulsive.
But I’m the type of impulsive that sits on a Honda Civic for about 13 years and then suddenly buys a house.
At the beginning of this month — with this car stuck in my brain — I started indulging in what I already figured was an impossibility. (Like, how does a person even buy a house right now, in this market? It would have to be a really shitty house, and do I want to live in a shitty house? No. I don’t.) I started looking at house listing.
The prices were exorbitant. Obviously. I was like: Holy shit, houses cost this much now?
I would look at houses on the market in between work stints. I would open a browser and go on Redfin to scrutinize houses that didn’t seem that much better than my condo. And remember, I’m not a flashy person. So I told myself I don’t need that much space. I just want a garage. I can’t go over 2,000 square feet because over that point, it is excessive for just one person. (People sometimes ask me about whether or not I will live with a roommate and I am like, ‘I would rather die.’) And obviously, I would need a certain aesthetic — I cannot handle a Crafstman-style home, gag me. And I’d need light and a place to put my four hundred plants. And I’d need some sort of area of my dogs to go shit and pee — like what would it even feel like to open a door and let them run loose to a toilet area? What would it be like to not have to wrangle two leashes tethered to two monsters who like to wrap themselves around my legs so I bite it and eat asphalt every morning?
Dude, so this soon-to-be-built house that popped up in my search.
It is the next street over. And much like the Ioniq 5, which doesn’t exist here yet, I saw this house that doesn’t even fucking exist yet, and I was like:
I want.
So I bought it. Over the course of two weeks, I went from just closing on my refinance to getting an offer accepted on a house. It was pretty ridiculous, and it’s pretty hilarious. It’s also an entirely long story all on its own, and I can feel that this story is getting long, so I will have to save the house saga for its own post. Talk to you later!