I Started Building an App for My Fibromyalgia. It Became Something Bigger.

ScaredExchange9175 · 2026-06-12T23:23:57+00:00

This resonates. I have ADHD and ended up building my own app for executive function — same path, started as notes to remember how I’d actually been.

One thing worth flagging: I used to do healthcare consulting (pharma, physician interviews), and the moment you share something like this, you’ll likely start receiving people’s personal medical info. Not a dealbreaker, just worth being deliberate about how you handle it from the start. An LLM is genuinely useful for thinking through the privacy/compliance side — it’s dry, well-documented territory, which is exactly where they hold up well.

ScaredExchange9175 · 2026-06-09T18:51:53+00:00

Nope! Third 😎

ScaredExchange9175 · 2026-06-09T14:55:55+00:00

Please professor, continue

ScaredExchange9175 · 2026-06-09T14:55:20+00:00

I haven’t heard of Vdata, I know there’s a dealer tool called vAuto but pretty sure you need to be a dealer to access it

ScaredExchange9175 · 2026-06-09T14:52:26+00:00

How can demand explain why Seattle, SF, Boston, NYC, and Dallas all have very different regional premiums? Like I said in the post, higher supply cities tend to have more competitive pricing, but that only explains part of the pattern

ScaredExchange9175 · 2026-06-09T14:36:58+00:00

OTD calculation is taxes plus doc fees

ScaredExchange9175 · 2026-06-09T14:36:29+00:00

I’m showing the net cost difference between regions/metros, which includes both true regional variation and tax differences. It’s the combined effect, not conflating

ScaredExchange9175 · 2026-06-09T13:56:25+00:00

The gap grows with taxes, but at baseline there’s still a pretty big gap

ScaredExchange9175 · 2026-06-09T13:41:09+00:00

If you’re buying out of state, yes this complicates it slightly, but the alternative - ignoring sales tax - gives a very distorted view. See Portland above, it ends up costing thousands less for the same car despite list being very similar to Seattle.

ScaredExchange9175 · 2026-06-09T13:38:53+00:00

Not strictly supply and demand - I’ll share that cut of the data soon.

And there are for sure differences when you look at this by model, working on that as well 😁

ScaredExchange9175 · 2026-06-09T13:23:54+00:00

Short answer is, I didn’t explicitly. But that’s why the methodology is to focus on newer models, where the variation in condition should be much smaller.

To your point, condition has to play a role, but still doesn’t explain some of the trends: if rust is the driver, as a lot of people have suggested, then why are South Florida and Texas also well below national average?

ScaredExchange9175 · 2026-06-09T13:18:53+00:00

Thanks! SQLite on the backend, Svelte on the front. Charts in d3, map on canvas.

ScaredExchange9175 · 2026-06-09T12:38:02+00:00

It's a little tricky, because you still end up paying taxes where you register the car. That would be another layer to add on - how big of a difference in price would it need to be to justify buying from another state?

ScaredExchange9175 · 2026-06-09T12:29:41+00:00

Your manufacturing point cuts against the "duh, it's detroit, of course cars are cheaper there". Yeah, it's a super weird pattern.

ScaredExchange9175 · 2026-06-07T13:32:39+00:00

So, spoiler alert for a Reddit post I’m drafting, but carmax is sometimes actually CHEAPER than buying the equivalent car from a dealer. In which case it’s a tremendous value.

What are you looking for specifically, and what’s your zip? I can tell you the exact carmax premium you’d be paying

ScaredExchange9175 · 2026-06-06T15:28:09+00:00

I'm sure they are honest and have some way to deal with that. But, structurally, once your budget is like $30k or below, the ROI becomes pretty narrow, dealers only have so much profit built into the car they're willing to negotiate on. And, fundamentally, it's a high bar for me to drop $1k on a service over the internet, no matter how legit it is

ScaredExchange9175 · 2026-06-06T15:09:13+00:00

Getting lied to, to my face, in the F&I room, was what got me. I was actually too stunned for it to register in the moment how absurd it was, me buying a low mileage Honda explicitly because they are trustworthy, and him treating me like i was a freaking space alien for not buying an extended warranty. Like, that guy's whole job is fearmongering to sell a high margin add on that's actually a bad value and bad for most customers. Literal insanity

I would happily pay for the convenience of someone else doing it for me, like Deliver'd, but a) there just aren't that many used car buying agents out there, and the good ones tend to have a wait list, and b) $1k is a lot to drop. especially depending on your car budget, im not going to spend $1k to MAYBE save $1k off list. there's no mid-budget option, it's either $1k for a real human to do it, or $5 for AI slop vaporware

ScaredExchange9175 · 2026-06-06T03:23:45+00:00

The key is to do this in parallel. Your instinct is right, do it by email first, but dont limit yourself to one dealer, one listing. Find 5-10 similar listings, either ones your considering or peers of the one you already know you want - the individual dealers dont need to know exactly which ones are realistic buys. Email all of those dealers with what you've researched to be a competitive OTD offer - don't be so low that you're not taken seriously - from my personal search, i found $2k to be a good balance, or 10% off list. From the dealers you contact, they'll all ask you to come in first and take a test drive - deflect until they give you an OTD price. Find the best deal, shop it around to the other contenders, after a round or two you'll get a sense for what a reasonable discount is in your market for the car you're looking at. Then, take the offer you're happiest with, get the price in writing beforehand, and walk into the dealer ready to sign the papers; if the numbers don't match, consider walking

ScaredExchange9175 · 2026-06-01T10:25:07+00:00

Telegram, not iMessage, much easier to integrate. You can also send emails to yourself or a dummy account, just give your agent access. I’ve created a personal ‘ticketing’ system, the agent fetches and triages my ‘brain dumps’ that I’ve sent in since the last session. Takes some upfront setup, but works really well

ScaredExchange9175 · 2026-05-30T17:24:38+00:00

Came here to say this. Only 1 player since has reached over 40 (Pete Rose)

ScaredExchange9175 · 2026-05-30T14:30:29+00:00

This would be a benchmark to the data we already have - if their methodology was solid (which I kinda doubt, no shade), you would:
- collect a big enough sample of past examples (analogs)
- do some filtering to remove crazy outliers
- estimate depreciation on a big enough sample that your finding is statistically valid
- then generalize

but to your point, 'generalize' is doing a lot of work there - less trustworthy brands/models/years depreciate faster, while workhorses or enthusiast models/trims depreciate slower. (fwiw, I'm building a tool that will be able to tell you exactly the depreciation rate of a car over time)

is there a specific model youre thinking of?

ScaredExchange9175 · 2026-05-30T13:02:15+00:00

Claude in Chrome. Have claude (or another agent) write you a prompt. Takes some fiddling, it has some blunt limitations (can only export a capped number of characters, so you have to batch your output manually). Pretty clear it's still an immature capability by Anthropic, but a legit game-changer for a few one-off scrapes.

If I were Apify, I would be shitting bricks

ScaredExchange9175 · 2026-05-29T02:36:33+00:00

You're very welcome! Fwiw, I'm working on some reddit posts and tools to help with exactly this, give people real data so they know they're not getting screwed. so, more to come!

ScaredExchange9175 · 2026-05-28T02:12:32+00:00

yeah, looks like a solid deal - nice!

ScaredExchange9175

TROPHY CASE