For a long time, I drove cheap old cars. Old, anyway. I thought they were cheap, but they weren’t. I drove two cars over 200,000 miles, in snow country which rusts them out.

The New Car/Old Car question rests largely on Depreciation vs. Maintenance and Repair Costs. And, these are not much different. Let me show you what I mean.

Here are the True Costs to Own a new 2022 Subaru Outback, over five years, according to Edmunds.com:

And, here are Edmunds’ estimates of the costs of buying a used 2016 Subaru Outback today.

According to this, it actually costs more to drive a six-year-old car than it does to drive a new one!

This is due to the rather distorted used car market today. With a normal market, depreciation on the new car would be about $1000/yr higher, and about $500/yr lower on the used car. That would make the new car about $1000/yr more expensive to own, which is about what it should be.

But, that is not very much. $1000 a year, out of a total cost of about $8000 a year. Or, about $80 a month. Plus, you get a variety of non-financial advantages from a new car, including people’s perceptions of you, your own enjoyment and self-esteem, and also, time and worry saved from not having a lot of breakdowns and repairs. Perceptions are important. Or, we would all be driving Kia Optimas.

So, even for young people, I recommend buying new cars. Whether you pay a monthly car loan, or you set aside monthly savings to eventually buy a new car, it works out about the same, especially with today’s still-low finance rates. If a new car seems like a stretch, then buy a cheap new car, like a base model Honda Civic.

I might make an exception for a second car that doesn’t get much use. You can have a daily driver, and then a ten-year-old sports or luxury car, that gets about 2000 miles a year. But here too, you might be better off just getting a more expensive new car, than having a separate “fun” car.

Of all the forms of exercise that a woman can choose from — and she should choose at least one — dance, and specifically ballet, is near the top. From dance, a woman learns poise, grace and beauty, which does not happen to women to do Crossfit, or play ice hockey. Mary Helen Bowers has made a business of dance-inspired workouts. She spent ten years dancing with the New York Ballet, so she is a serious dancer. (If she was a baseball player, she would have played for the New York Yankees.)

There are Fitness Moms, but Ballet Moms are on a different level. The grace and poise that they learned as girls stays with them. Here is Mary Helen Bowers, now age about 43, and a mother.

If you look like this at Age 43,

You Win.

You do not have to ever become a very good ballet dancer. For every ten thousand people who play baseball in their youth, only one joins a Major League team, but all benefit from their time playing sports. So, too, for every one dancer that becomes a professional at a top company, ten thousand girls practice a little ballet, and benefit from it.

Here, from major Russian dance academy Vaganova, is a compilation of professional dancers and their children.

Lori Alexander, the “Transformed Wife,” today reaches a rare pinnacle of feminine virtue. This has not earned her many friends. I was expecting to find some fault or disagreement, over time, with her somewhat churchy, Bible-inspired approach, but that has not happened. Rather, I find that I am a quiet ally with her, against most other Christian women, who want to be Christians and Feminists too.

As a young woman, she was all the things that more serious men today have decided that they want, but can’t find. She got married at 21 or 22, and had children a couple years later. Before marriage, it is perhaps needless to say that she herself was a Debt-Free (or, mostly so) Virgin Without Tattoos, and also, from a healthy intact family. Also: slim, long hair of a natural color, not too much makeup, no weird piercings, and pretty, feminine clothes that aren’t slutty. Although no great beauty, with her natural youthful charm, and cheerful attitude, she was pretty enough for any reasonable man not specifically on the lookout for a Trophy Wife. In the first years of her marriage, she says that she had a lot of sex.

Her husband Ken was a similar sort of character, a 7/10 for looks and a 10/10 for virtue.

Nevertheless, she struggled for over twenty years of marriage, which deteriorated into a grim march of “we’re doing it for the children.” She read a number of books on marriage, and consulted with her pastor and friends, but without much results. She says that she was put on the right path by the book Created to Be His Helpmeet, by Debi Pearl. The basic problem seems to have been a sort of latent proto-feminism, which resulted in a constant state of rebelliousness, or, lack of submission.

The first thing you need to do in order to have a good marriage is to let it go. You must no longer try to control or criticize your husband in any way.

There is a lot more in her book The Power of a Transformed Wife, which also aligns with other worthwhile efforts like The Surrendered Wife. So, I would read it, if you are a married woman, or you want to be. Obviously, men should read it too, because if you are going to be the leader, you want to be well informed. Too many men are taught to “surrender” to their wives (simping, basically), and put her on a pedestal/leadership role. Obviously, this is going to make things difficult even if you do have that rare woman who aspires to do things the right way.

After a few changes, things worked out for Lori Alexander and her marriage with Ken. Now she teaches other women what she discovered.

For me, I am a little alarmed that even a woman in the Top 1% of feminine virtue, would have so many problems. For men, it means that even if we start with the best raw materials, we still have to form them up into something workable. The feminist atmosphere in the US is really toxic. I have a Japanese wife, and although she was not extraordinarily virtuous as a young woman, nevertheless she and all her friends (except one) have made good wives and mothers. Probably, in the past, American women were about the same. Bad wives were outliers. Today, even the very best American women might need some fixing; and, men will have to do this, or at the very least, make it easy for her to do.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a population now of “eGirls” age 18-24 or so, who do all the Wifey stuff, but do not seem to actually want to become wives. The exchange seems to go something like this:

“I don’t want to work at some email job. I want to get married, have children, and have some guy pay for all my stuff. Plus, I am beautiful, a good cook, traditional, unvaxxed, no tattoos, and saving myself for my future husband.”

“Well, I am a 30yo guy who looks pretty good, has a good job, and I’m looking for an unvaxxed wife to have a bunch of children with, who wants to stay at home, raise the children, homeschool, and bake bread.”

“What are you bothering us eGirls for? Grow up already! Go get married and have children!”

Basically, they are social media attention whores.

Helen Roy writes that 75% of women in the US try to breastfeed, but give it up somewhere along the line. This is a little weird. All the other mammals breastfeed, and they do not “fail.” Today, at six months of age, only 13% of babies are exclusively breastfed.

My wife breastfed our son exclusively. He never tasted “baby formula.” He even refused, as an infant, real breast milk in a bottle. This was, not very long ago, the norm. “Baby formula” only became common in the 1960s, although there were various home recipes before then. It coincides, not surprisingly, with the spread of working mothers.

Breastfeeding is very time consuming. A mother of an infant, especially in the first few months, may have to breastfeed about every two hours, including through the night. This, in itself, is no big deal. It is what human mothers have done for millions of years. Commonly, this and other basic babycare tasks can become so demanding that basic housekeeping and cooking may be neglected. Often, family and friends may help out around the house for the first few months.

Obviously, breastfeeding and working outside the home do not go together very well — or, even working in the home, or working from home. The solution, that we promote around here, is: Don’t work. Be a stay-at-home Mom. This might mean giving up some material comforts. Women in the prehistoric past lived in tiny huts made of twigs and leaves, but they stayed home and breastfed their infants.

Are you really going to find some other, better solution? In the last fifty years of working mothers, nobody has. We have the Feminist types begging for state-funded daycare, mandatory postnatal work leave, and all the other things to make a dysfunctional system less dysfunctional. But, even if they got all their wishes, these women would soon find out that abandoning their children to be raised by the State, and depending ever more on The Corporation to be their provider, instead of a husband, has dire consequences. Why bother to have children at all. Women themselves are coming to the same conclusion, which is one reason we see fertility rates plummet far below replacement levels wherever mothers work full time.

Be a Barren Whore if you like. But, if you have children, get married first, and be a stay-at-home Mom. And, breastfeed. If you are already a stay-at-home Mom, why not?

Today, a small wedding makes sense. The fact of the matter is, our wedding habits are formed from a time when nearly all the guests lived within a 20 mile radius. I suppose you could argue that 20 miles, in the old days, was still a full day’s travel, and that a five-hour flight from the East to West Coast is not much different, in terms of time and relative expense. Nevertheless, it is a lot to ask of our more distant relatives and friends to get on a plane for a wedding. When you consider not only the expense to the families of the wedding couple, but also everything spent by guests on travel, hotels, gifts, clothing (such as matching dresses for bridesmaids), and so forth, the total cost of a wedding today is completely absurd. Just stay home and send the couple $1000 via Paypal.

Once you have cut down the guest list, it is not too hard to keep overall expenses low. I would aim for less than $3000 for the wedding, all in, with about 20 guests. This is enough for a pleasant venue and a nice dinner.

But, let’s say that you want a big wedding, which we will define as 50 to 100 guests. Here is a real-world solution, which you can adjust to fit your own real-world circumstances.

Near us is a State Park that has a nice stone building, or “pavilion,” on a lake. It has tables for about 80 guests, and attached bathrooms and a kitchen. It costs $150 to rent for a day.

Let’s say that we will max out this facility at 80 guests. We will need a few things: tablecloths, dishware and glassware for 80 people. Probably, we can rent this somewhere, but actually, used high-quality dishware and glassware is so cheap these days that we can probably buy high-quality china for 80 people for less than one day’s rental fee. I would guess about $300 would do it. You might also ask guests (basically, older mothers) to bring their own quality dishware, glassware and table linens for use at the event, if they live nearby.

Ask some of the guests to do the cooking and serving. Probably, this will be older moms, accompanied by younger daughters. Other guests, who have more money than time, can be asked to provide some materials for the dinner, such as wine or necessary ingredients. Some guests can simply make a monetary contribution. A few guests offering $100 each would cover most food costs.

All in, the total cost might be around $3000 for 80 guests, which can be completely covered with wedding gifts/donations, for a net cost of $0.

Hold the wedding ceremony at the facility, or at a church.

SigmaFrame did a useful rundown of “red pill” bloggers. This does not include YouTube, but most of the heavy lifting is still done in long-format print. SigmaFrame lamented that the “Christian redpill,” “Marriage redpill,” and “Fatherhood and family redpill” segments are notably scarce.

I would categorize our efforts here as “Marriage RedPill” and “Fatherhood and Family redpill.” This also makes it “Christian-friendly,” although we are not really proper Christians around here.

The basic theme of this blog is “building.” It is not “analyzing the decline,” “dealing with what we have,” or even “finding solutions,” although there is a lot of that. It is more about “explaining and implementing solutions.” Or, as I put it:

Get up off your knees. (Stop complaining and acting helpless. Don’t expect women to fix the problems.)
Get your patriarchy on. (Men are builders. Women will never do it.)
Tell the Bitches What to Do. (Mostly, after Men establish their own goals or blueprints, and personal behaviors in accordance to those goals, which is an internal process, the main next step is to instruct women. Kevin Samuels is a good example of what I mean. The process of discussion itself is “telling men what to do,” but you really can’t tell men, you can just suggest.)

After reviewing the options, we around here have decided that the traditional pattern of marriage and family, found in nearly all successful advanced cultures, would be our strategy of choice. For one thing, it works. And also, history tells us that it seems to be the only thing that works. Or, there would be some example, somewhere, of some other successful system, and not just a society in degeneracy and decline. But, the basic patterns of the Christian world before 1900 were also the same in India, China, the Middle East (or Islam, which is basically Christianity 2.0) and Japan. We might make mention of polygamy, which has a long history especially in the Muslim world. This does appear to be sustainable. But, it has been noted through the centuries that this has many inherent problems. For every man with five wives, there are four men without wives. Much else leads from this.

I recommend that most men make an effort to get married and have plenty of children. I suggest a stay-at-home Wife and Mother, with homeschooling a high priority. However, this requires a woman that is capable of being a Good Wife and a Good Mother, even in today’s environment with all its corruptive influences. If you can’t find a good woman, forget it. Do not attempt to turn a Hoe into a Housewife. Let the Strong and Independent women (aka “shrews”) be Strong and Independent. Especially, Independent. Probably, this implies that only about 30% of men would marry. But, since there are still a lot of stupid men, unfit women still have a lot of options.

I have not said too much about maintaining a family and raising children. But, if you have got this far, I don’t think it will be too difficult. Mostly, girls should be expected to live at home until marriage, preferably around Age 18-20. Basically, Jane Austen. I think we can make some allowance for individual oddities. But, that should be the main pattern. Most women should have children; and, after having children, should raise them. Some women will go without marriage and children. Some women will have children, but will have others raise them, in a successful manner, which probably means private nannies, governesses and tutors, or possibly, relatives such as siblings or parents.

Today, there seems to be a bifurcation growing. I personally do not feel the need to worry about mainstream society much. My son will probably find a wife among the homeschool community. Among all the other desirable features — a debt-free virgin without tattoos — we can now add: no Covid vaxxes. This is becoming a breakaway society, which I think will intensify soon.

Here’s Melanie King, commenting on a video of a woman who, apparently, actually called in to Kevin Samuels’ show, and actually followed his advice. It worked!

This woman now has her own YouTube channel, RealFemSapien, where you can get some of the advice that mothers used to regularly tell their daughters, but don’t anymore.

Men can tell the Wifey women right away. Note that she wears a dress, has longish hair of a natural color, and not much makeup. She has some tattoos, left over from past error, but no noserings. But, mostly she says the right things.

Other than that, she is, perhaps, nothing special. She has an average background (lower middle class), average looks (but not fat), and, maybe, average intelligence. This is good. Average woman can be Max Wifey too, and gain all the Wifey benefits. It is not reserved to a special slice of the upper middle class.

Today, there being not so many Wifey girls out there, the few that exist have an unnatural advantage. This woman seems to have married well above her socioeconomic class.

Let’s also take note of Melanie King herself, who is a 10/10 for looks, and a 9/10 or even a 10/10 for brains. Plus, she is very Wifey-friendly. This combination puts her in the Top 1% of all American women. But, she is not actually so Wifey herself. She has more of a “doing her own thing” energy. I don’t get the impression that having a family is a priority for her, even though she encourages it for others.

This is simple advice for girls: No tattoos, and also, no piercings — especially those horrible “snot hoop” rings that seem to be everywhere these days. Earrings are OK.

There are actually some women who are looking for a man who likes books like Fascinating Womanhood. Also, most of them are better looking than average. (No blue hair, tattoos, nose rings, and fewer fatties.) Some of them are total babes.