Saving/investing is absurd and ridiculous for most people!

[Seadog]

I kind of always took the opposite tact. I worked hard in school, got a proper 'fancy' degree, then got a 'fancy' job with the assumption that I'd be able to earn money way more efficiently (not untrue), and eek out a normal life in like a third of the time, and spend the rest doing stuff I really loved. Turns out the joke was on me, because when you're a professional who's good at your job, one of a handful in a country who can do certain things, the expectation at every level from coworkers to bosses to society is to work even more, because you gotta maximize that old pay check!

Grammar note: it's "tack"-- derived from a sailing term meaning the angle at which the ship sails relative to the wind.

Yikes. Doubly bad typo as I actually sail a fair bit... Regardless, I still like the cut of your jib with regards to the advice about cars.

[Just Joe]

That comes off as a bit of defeatist attitude. I've met people who don't know how to change their oil, and literally zero interest in learning. If you've ever used a screwdriver/socket, and know "lefty loosey, righty tighty", then you have the technical skill to change your oil. Oh and maybe knowing how to use a funnel helps too, although that's really just part of the "adding oil" skill.

Learning to change your own oil is one thing. The skill I was referring to was having a solid enough knowledge of cars and the used car market such that you can effectively mark your car purchase budget as 0. This is kind of like being an arbitrage trader in the world of cars.

Learning to change your oil is just the first step in a process to learn how to repair your own vehicles. Sort like putting on skates is the first step to learning how to figure skate.