Final cut
Keep the reel rolling, or call cut?
How it worksMost repair calculators weigh one bill against the item's value. That ignores the next breakdown, and the one after. Enter your numbers and a reinforcement learner works out, for every age and condition, which bills are worth paying.
The item
Rehearsal
The learner lives through thousands of simulated years with your numbers, sometimes trying the other call on purpose, and keeps a table of what each choice ended up costing.
0 lives · epsilon 1.00
The bold director (Q-learning) plans as if every future call will be perfect. The cautious one (SARSA) plans around its own occasional random tries.
The cut list
▶ keep rolling · ✂︎ call cut and replace · dashed · the learner disagrees with the exact answer · ringed · your item now. Small and major mean a typical bill from your range.
Verdict
At 9 years and worn, fix bills under $4,350, replace above.
Over the next 10 years that plan costs about $16,550 in today's dollars, after what you get back when you sell. That is $1,150 less than the 50% rule, which would scrap it for any bill over $1,400.
| Plan | 10 year cost |
|---|---|
| Exact planfix while the bill is under the break even for its age and condition | $16,550 |
| Learned plan · not rehearsed yetthe cut list the learner wrote, by bill size | $16,650 |
| 50% rulereplace when a bill tops half of what it is worth | $17,650 |
| Drive till it diesfix everything until a failing one needs a major repair | $16,700 |
| Replace every 6 yearsswap on schedule, fix anything before then | $20,050 |
Each cost is the average of 3,000 simulated futures from where your item is today, the same futures for every plan, discounted at 5% a year, minus its resale at the end.
Honesty
The learner only ever sees simulated years. To check it, value iteration solves the same 99 situations exactly from your numbers, and every cell where the two disagree gets a dashed outline on the cut list. Disagreements cluster where keeping and replacing cost almost the same. The learner also only knows a bill is small or major, not its exact amount, so on wide ranges its plan can cost a little more.
The verdict sentence and the exact plan come from that solver, not from the learner. Condition never improves after a repair here, and bills are drawn evenly from your ranges.
Only as good as your numbers, not financial advice.