I think the parent comment is absolutely right, more competition in the industry can only be a good thing from a societal perspective, as the highest quality workers take the jobs from the poor performers. Obviously from your perspective it might be worrisome, especially (and I apologize for getting personal) with all that stuff coupled with student loans, but surely it's a net societal good.

I was responding to the specific portion of the parent comment I quoted, nothing more.

Did you start out with the two cars before getting into student loan debt? Following that on with auto loans, maintenance and a mortgage isn't helping your financial independence.

Our mortgage is less than what our rent was at our apartment.

We owned one car prior to university and took out an auto loan to get my wife her own car.

We work in opposite directions and we each have a commute time of ~20-25 minutes, so moving closer to her job would increase my commute time and moving closer to my job would increase hers.

Our schedules are too different to make carpooling a possibility anyway. Also, there's no way to get to either of our jobs using public transportation.