The Buick Enclave: America's Favorite Money Vampire

 

With its sleek styling and eye-catching extras like Driver and Google Assist, built-in GPS, heated seats, steering wheel, seatbelts, dash, glove compartment and sun visors (probably, why not) as well as screens everywhere you look, the Buick Enclave will impress your friends every minute it is in your driveway and not at the Dealership getting something else fixed- in other words, roughly three weekends a month. 

With a base model (stripped down, including NONE of the things mentioned in the above paragraph) price of only $45,890 you don't need to be among the One Percent to "own" one of these ridiculous, overengineered beauties.  You just need $4999 due at signing and convenient monthly payments of $679 a month for sixty months,*  assuming you qualify for the low low advertised APR...which would make you among the One Percent.  

Otherwise, we can get you into this Wannabee LookAtMeMobile for that $679 a month, we'll just stretch it out over 72 months, don't worry it looks exactly the same in your driveway, there's no way your neighbors will know.  Your mechanic might eventually notice that he's been working on the same obnoxious piece of Foolish Vanity like clockwork for seven years but who cares what he thinks, he probably drives a Toyota or something else Sensible, the Loser. 

With only five active recalls and minor, barely-worth-mentioning common complaints such as engine cooling issues, engine electrical issues, squeaking or grinding brakes, and the minor, expected-in-all-models early transmission rebuild or replace, this Buick will be the gem of your neighborhood.  And on those occasions when you actually have it out on the road, those screens are a great distraction from a heater that doesn't heat and AC that doesn't cool.  

Remember, in Buick commercials Buick owners are always asking "where's the Buick?" or saying "let's take the Buick?" because when you own a Buick you are constantly reminded it's a Buick.  I mean, the name is right there on top of the work order and the monthly payment.  

*by the way, you can easily find ten-year old versions of this model for as low as $7300 on the used car market.  Makes you think about little thing called Depreciation, doesn't it?  If not, let me quickly break it down for you:  If you bought this Buick new in 2015 for $26000 and paid it off in $360.99 per month installments over the course of six years, in 2021 you'd own a car that four years later would be worth $7300.  If that sounds like a good deal to you, then paying $499 a month for six years for a 2025 model instead of $7300 for the 2015 probably sounds good too.**  So go for it.  I'm just glad you don't handle my money.

**And I'm not even going to mention the difference in insurance rates when comparing a 2015 Buick to the 2025 model.  I think I've made my point.

Remember Hydroxycut? Well, you don't have to. It's still around.

 

Full disclosure: I have no idea who Heidi Montag is.  I guess she's some kind of "influencer?"  But who the hell isn't?  I don't care.

This stuff has been around FOREVER (at least twenty years.)  The company that developed it went bankrupt back in 2005 and the formula* and brand name was purchased by another entity which continues to make ads featuring people celebrating their weight loss with Hydroxycut.  This stuff is available in the supplement aisle of a lot of stores, dangerously close to actual medications backed up by actual clinical studies.  So even if you never see any of these commercials you might be convinced that this is a weight loss drug approved by doctors and just blonde girls in bikinis with zero credentials.

*the formula is olives, mint, and coffee.  There's a "non-stimulating" version that doesn't have any coffee.  There are no other "active ingredients" in this Basically a Placebo.  Which is the most positive thing I can say about it- at least, it doesn't seem capable of doing any harm except to your bank account.  But if you really want to lose weight, why would you waste time with this nonsense?   

Probably a quick comment on this Indeed Commercial

 

Or, more accurately, a few quick comments:

1.  You can tell that this is a fairly old commercial where we have a woman thinking that she's going to effortlessly jump from one high-paying job to another.  Thing is, it's from 2021, and the United States was just starting to come out of the pandemic and the job market was even worse than it is now.  And why is nobody here wearing a mask?

2.  Like all Indeed Commercials, the disgruntled worker or unemployed person at the center of the narrative thinks that an invitation to interview = a job.  Last time I checked, interviews did not come with any pay at all.  If I was paid for every interview for a teaching position I had in the early 1990s, I could have retired without ever starting an actual teaching career.  That would have been nice, actually.

3.  I can't help wonder if this woman's "I'm actively seeking a job at another company while drawing a paycheck from my current company" attitude might be one reason why she keeps getting turned down for a promotion.  Maybe it's a self-fulfilling prophecy?  Maybe the guy who got the job ISN'T constantly updating his resume on Indeed and Monster and LinkedIn and actually oh,  I don't know, just EARNING HIS PAYCHECK?

4.  I also can't help wonder if this woman has ever just come out and told the Suits who run her company that if she doesn't get a promotion, she's going to walk.  If you are really valuable to your employer, this can actually be a pretty effective way of getting what you want.  Standing there with a tight thin fake smile and tearing-up eyes before checking your phone for an exit ramp might not be.  Just a thought.  Four thoughts, as it turns out. 

Debt Consolidation Loans are getting weirder by the day

 

 I have never in my life been as excited about anything as Kevin is about shifting debt from one creditor to another.  If this clown is going to dance on the street at the news that he's been approved for yet another debt consolidation loan which allows him to put off being an adult about his money issues for a few more years, I can't even imagine how he'd react to actually being financially stable.  

The Ford F-150 is a huge serving of Cope

 

As I've always suspected, the vast majority of these trucks are not being used for any of the purposes shown in the ads.  Almost NOBODY is using these trucks to haul tools and bags of 'Merican Stuff, tow, or crash through sand dunes and forests for "fun."  Instead, they are being used to haul groceries home from Costco and children to and from soccer practice; in other words, they are just SUVs designed to look like those vehicles blue-collar people used to own for work. 

For some reason, people living in suburbs want to project an image of rugged individualism and adventure.  They want their neighbors to think that they have hobbies that require the hauling of tools and materials and enjoy the Great Outdoors and need a $70,000 truck to Just Live Their Lives, so they need a truck with an average monthly payment of $700* over the course of 72 months and can afford the inflated maintenance and insurance that comes along with these ridiculous ornaments to conspicuous consumption.  An SUV might convince the guy across the street that you have money, but it won't sell him on the idea that an actual virile American Man lives in your house.   You need a truck for that, even if you never use it for any of the tasks you saw in the commercial because after all, it looks like that stuff creates dents and scratches and those don't show well either even though they would be evidence that you actually use your truck to do all that rugged and fun stuff.  See the problem here?

Back in the 1960s, a lot of young people gave societal expectations the middle finger by purchasing Volkswagen Bugs and Vans- cheap, ugly vessels that got them from Point A to Point B and told the world that their owners weren't buying in to Consumerism.  I think that the current version of Minimalism is people who ride bikes** to work or drive beaters (I own a 2-door 2011 Honda Civic.)  But YouTube is overflowing with horror stories of mostly young people being buried by car payments (at high interest rates) because they signed up for new cars that cost more than my entire college career with monthly notes higher than my rent.  All to show well for their neighbors and friends.  It's scary and dumb and more than a little entertaining (sorry) but it shows how desperate so many people are to project Economic Success while sabotaging their ability to attain it. 

*Trucks are the most popular Lease vehicles in the United States.  You think anyone is going to lease a truck and then plow it through the forest or toss anything heavier than a case of Diet Coke in the back of it?  Yeah, sure Jan.

**I'm referring to the people who ride bikes that DON'T cost $5k.  People who spend more for their bikes than I spent for my Civic are just flexing in a different way. 

Coors Light and Wedding Ceremonies; what could go wrong?

 

So maybe the bride and groom wouldn't really appreciate the ceremony being interrupted by two members of the wedding party suddenly handing out cans of beer, no matter how much the gesture was appreciated by the guests who decided not to wear hats or use umbrellas despite the fact that this particular event is taking place under a blazing sun and it's heavily implied that it is very very hot out.  Maybe they'd rather NOT have the exchange of vows interrupted by the spray of shaken beer or have their moment (or, to be more honest, HER moment) contest for attention by the guzzling of watered-down beer.

Maybe if the bride and groom wanted the guests drinking beer during the ceremony, they would have planned a much more laid-back event including a touch football game afterwards, as one of my older brothers almost fifty years ago.  They wouldn't have set up this cliche'd nonsense outdoors in a place with no shade in the middle of the summer with guests wearing full suits and dresses desperate for the whole painful thing to just Be Over Already.

But I don't know if this is worse than most of the other TV Commercial Weddings I've seen in the past few years, with everyone on their iPhones instead of paying attention to the two people ruining a perfectly lovely afternoon for dozens of people who would rather be doing pretty much anything than watching them pledge to temporarily live together and file jointly.

This Pizza Hut Campaign Launch is even worse than most

 

So I'm guessing that this clown, chosen after weeks or even months of screen tests with thousands of aspiring "actors" in the LA area, will be featured in a series of ads for very cheap-yet-overpriced carbohydrates in which he offers boxes of grease to random strangers just trying to live their lives.  Like the two guys playing basketball in this ad; who asked this obnoxious jerk to interrupt their exercise with blood-sugar spiking, inflammatory crap?

I know Pizza Hut won't listen to this, but I'm going to say it anyway:  Sometimes a stumble is a good reason to stop and rethink your journey.  This is very dumb and very pointless and your pizza is not worth eating and hopefully nobody who engages in regular exercise would sabotage their efforts at good health by consuming warmed-over poison-in-a-red-and-white-box just because a creep they don't know offered to to them off the street.  I don't want to knock anyone's hustle, but this is bad even for you.