When we bought our new truck in July (has it been that long ago?) I didn’t get an extended warranty, but I did spring for a prepaid “oil changes for life” plan. And I’m beginning to realize one of the downsides of failing to keep up with automotive technology.<\/p>\n
When I did the mental calculation on the payout for the prepaid plan, I used my standard “every 3,000 miles” schedule, and I figured I’d easily come out ahead, even factoring in the time value of money. What I failed to realize is that today’s cars (at least in the Wonderful World of Honda) no longer require oil changes as frequently as the 11-year old Durango I was replacing. And, in fact (I’m sure most of you already know this), you — the driver and owner — have no active role in the decision regarding when the oil needs to be changed; the computer will let you know when it’s time, thank you very much.<\/p>\n
So I now find that the Ridgeline has just under 4,000 miles and the computer is telling me that we’re still at 60% of oil life, and I’m beginning to realize that I’ve paid approximately $70 each for oil change over the estimated 100,000 miles I’ll probably rack up before buying another car. Another brilliant financial decision.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, maybe I’ll get lucky and the truck will exhibit one or more of these characteristics<\/a> and I’ll get more frequent changes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When we bought our new truck in July (has it been that long ago?) I didn’t get an extended warranty, but I did spring for a prepaid “oil changes for life” plan. And I’m beginning to realize one of the downsides of failing to keep up with automotive technology. When I did the mental calculation… Continue reading Too smart for my own good<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cars","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}