Absolutely, that first salary number follows you around forever. I learned the hard way by taking the first offer out of college. You end up playing catch up for years trying to fix it.

It's not just houses, it's like people trying to plan a whole vacation without checking if they have the time off approved. You get all excited looking at beaches and hotels, and then your boss says no. It's this weird habit of skipping the boring but important step to get to the fun part faster, which just makes everything take longer and hurt more in the end. I see it all the time with projects, people buy all the materials before they even know if the city will give them a permit.

Oh man, that's so true! My buddy went through the exact same thing with his 2017 last winter. He was complaining about it feeling gutless for months, and his mechanic finally talked him into letting them check the EGR system. They showed him a picture of the cooler and it looked completely plugged up, just like yours. He said the difference after they cleaned it out was night and day, it totally fixed his power problem. It's crazy how such a simple part can cause so many issues when it gets dirty.