Car-Garage Convergence

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I did not live in a dwelling with a garage until I was 38. Even though I was renting the house, I felt like I had “made it.”

Fast forward a few years…the house in which my wonderful wife and I lived for most of our time in Texas had a 3-car garage, but we “only” had two cars. After we moved to the mid-Atlantic, we lived in a house with a 2-car garage, but we had three vehicles.

Fast forward to now…

 

 

Our 2015 Cadillac ATS was delivered yesterday. (Many thanks, Austin.) I did not want to take a picture from the rear and show our license plates. Can’t be too careful these days…

While the garage is smaller than a 3-car should be, after removal of lots of “stuff” we are able to park three cars in it. We have a 3-car garage with three cars, as it should be. Yes, we took the ATS to the grocery store yesterday and it easily handled our purchases.

I actually drove it for the first time and it was impressive. The car is comfortable, chock full of features like lane departure warning and is surprisingly nimble. Here is a better picture of the Z06 and the ATS:

 

 

Wish us luck with our new vehicle. Hey, just wish us luck and I will do the same for you.

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The nearly $1 billion Mega Millions annuity jackpot could be won this evening. At our age, my wonderful wife and I would take the cash, which is about $720 million. Even assuming paying about 50% in taxes, that would leave a sole winner with $360 million, free and clear.

Arizona is, unfortunately, not a state in which a lottery winner can remain anonymous, unlike the state we left. The conventional wisdom is if one should find themselves in this position, tell as few people as possible and set up some legal entity that does not bear the name of the winner(s) to claim the prize.

This should surprise no one, but I have already set up a spreadsheet with the numbers 0-9 and the letters a-z each assigned a random number. If the miracle happens, I will recalculate the random numbers thousands of times and then sort by that number. The six or eight characters that appear at the top will be the name of our trust to claim the prize.

Like I wrote yesterday, we have no debt, a good net worth and are not spending money we can’t afford to buy lottery tickets. The ticket displayed yesterday cost $6. Spending $6 to have a chance to win $360 million, no matter how small that chance, seems reasonable to us. As I have said to my wonderful wife hundreds of times, “Wouldn’t that be something?”

 

#Car-GarageConvergence

#2015CadillacATS

#MegaMillions

#Wouldn’tThatBeSomething?

#somanycarsjustonelife

#disaffectedmusings

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Published by rulesoflogic

Empiricism over ideology!

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10 thoughts on “Car-Garage Convergence”

  1. Oh poo I bought my tickets after the jackpot hit a billion, but I bought without the MegaBall. This was after going out and buying three bottles of a Bordeaux and two bottles of a Portuguese blend. Alcohol and lottery tickets: I’ll add my Romeo y Julieta cigar and that will be the trifecta of sinful behaviors!

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  2. I meant I forgot the “MegaPlier” option.
    Re garages, my ex and I built a house years ago with a house builder who rivaled The Three Stooges. They had sixty windows delivered at 4pm on Monday, and they were “gone” by 8:30 Tuesday morning. Instead of the “oversized” soaking tub we ordered, they installed an “oversized” Jacuzzi tub. And instead of the three car garage we ordered, we got a three car garage-if one of your cars were an original Mini Cooper. We ultimately bit the bullet and parked the third car in the driveway. Eventually someone bought the house at a nice profit for my ex; the times I have gone by I see their third car in the driveway.

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  3. Good to see the Caddy overcame the limitations of the garage. Sounds like you enjoyed driving the new addition too, so that’s great to hear.
    My move means I’ll technically lose my garage space, though I am able to store my Grand Prix in my folks’ garage until the season changes.

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    1. Thanks, Mark. Making room for the ATS required a lot of rearranging, but I don’t believe that the primary purpose of a garage is for storage. I have seen, and continue to see, homes where not even one vehicle can be parked in the garage because of all of the crap in it.

      In Arizona, homes don’t usually have basements so some storage space is “missing.” We no longer have a basement like we had in the mid-Atlantic and we lost about 2,000 square feet/185 square meters of living area in the move. Still, we made room for all three cars. Of course, the fact that the longest one is only 184 inches in length helps.

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  4. I like the looks of your new ride. Good luck on its performance over the years. I need to include these when I start my replacement car search sometime later this year.

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    1. Thanks, JS. Cadillac no longer makes the ATS coupe, or any coupe for that matter. Their line of sedans begins with the CT-4, which can be purchased new for under $40,000. Both the CT-4 and the CT-5 have a performance V spec model. The CT-5 V engine produces 360 HP/405 LB-FT of torque.

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