Yup!
That is how I managed to pay-off my 30 year mortgage in 22 years. When the mortgage payments ended, that allowed me to accelerate my investing/saving, thereby helping me to have a secure retirement.
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I’m going to agree that the noise is Probably an exhaust shield. with the car not running kick the tail pipe. does that make it rattle? If so that’s probably it. The trans is a completely different issue. You obviously have no clue, so go see a competent shop, please.
Concur, cooking at home rather than dining out is one of the best ways to quickly save $$. Another upside to home cooking , the food tastes exactly the way you like it, and is probably healthier. Home cooking takes more time and planning, that’s the downside. If it is just impossible to home-cook, another idea is to buy frozen dinners at the grocery store, then nuke them at home. You’ll still save considerable $$$ compared to dining out. In Calif the savings is even greater, b/c there is no sales tax at all on most grocery store food, while you pay full sales tax on everything you order when dining out.
Diy’ering some of your maintenance and repairs can prove very helpful for your finances too.
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+1
One of the women with whom I worked would frequently order an afternoon snack (from a restaurant) of salsa and chips. For the privilege of having the restaurant staff pull a handful of chips out of a large bag and put them in a small bag for her, and for having them pour some salsa from their large jar and put it into a small container for her, she paid an outrageous price–plus a delivery charge. She was a very intelligent woman, but–somehow–the idea of doing the same thing at home, before she left for work, never dawned on her.
Restaurant food is frequently salted too heavily. Prepared foods that you buy from the supermarket almost always have sodium levels that are astoundingly high. (One “portion”–which is actually a lot less than the amount that most men would eat–frequently contains something like 60% of the sodium that one should ingest daily)
Preparing food–from scratch–at home is the most economical approach and it is almost always the healthiest approach.
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this is why i sometimes hate regular jobs. you got people there that you see every work day and no matter how much you are a private person someone is always judging you for everything you do. i never intended to make friends or know anyone outside of work from work but there is always someone there that make assumptions and judgments. if you doordash or uber youre just you and nobody cares what you do. most people in todays world arent worth knowing and if they are you would make a personal effort to get to know them personally but at work you got people just not minding their business. and its impossible to just work at a job to work anymore unless you got your own office and you are upper level. i worked as a server at a few restaurant due to the fact that you deal with customers all day you really didnt have to get to know or have to deal with most of your coworkers outside of formalities but if you work at a place with a bunch of kids that also goes out the window because younger people seem to work at restaurants to socialize and cant treat it as just a job.
And that reputable shop should perform all the skipped maintenance services, if OP truly wants to drive this car for several more years
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I’m like this woman. While I prepare breakfast and dinner at home, I make it a habit to purchase lunch every single day. My reason is to satisfy my appetite 
I like to try something new every single day for lunch, be it taco, subway, Panera bread salads, and some buffalo wings.
I believe in keeping up with car maintenance, as long as the stuff required are necessary.
As long as you have the budget for it, it is a good thing to treat yourself now and then, or daily if able, it is the ones with a Champagne taste on a Beer budget that gets them into trouble… But don’t do it and then complain to me about being behind on bills or I need and I can’t, cause I will tell you like it is…
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On a recently aired episode of Counting Cars (a tv show about restoring classic cars), they restored musician Bob Marley’s 1970’s Mercedes for his son, Ziggy Marley. Ziggy was so happy w/the result that he thanked the restorers by providing a Jamaican food feast. It sure looked tasty!
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i am happy to report and update that this noise was due to a loose hood hinge bolt. i secured the hood with 4 bolts in place and now there is no longer this noise.
lesson learned is that i strongly believe carmax the ultimate pile of donkey manure of a company has intentionally loosened bolts or perhaps was he vietnamese mechanic i trusted my car to.
the source of rattling was the hood being loose at hinge where bolt goes.
remedy was tightening and replacing missing bolts.
Yes, that would be an excellent business model.
NOT!
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And this is the reason I skip most of the 1 star reviews… 
Yeah, CarMax a Billion $ company that sold over 800K cars in 2023 alone got that way from intentionally leaving hood bolts etc loose on everyone’s vehicles…
Maybe a bad mechanic or a mistake happened, that can be with any company, I have had to fire many mechanics that were found to be worthless, sh!t happens, it sux, but it happens… I have known lots of master technicians that bought multiple vehicles from CarMax and highly recommend them… When you sell enough vehicles, you will get a bad one now and then…
I am about as non politically correct as they come at times, I make fun of those that are sometimes, so when I say there is NO reason to point out the mechanics ethnicity, that is saying something… I have had the pleasure of working with multiple Vietnamese mechanics, some good, some still learning the ropes, all trustworthy, just like any other red blooded American might be… Are there bad ones out there, yep, all races have good and bad…
If you act and talk with/to them, like you do on here most of the time, I am surprised your wheels haven’t fallen off yet…
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Our friends bought a 2022 RAV4 from CarMax in late 2023. When they tried to register it, the state had problems with the VIN. It took about a year, but it was determined that the car was stolen and had a fake VIN put on it. Our friends had a rental car paid for by their insurer or CarMax while the year long police investigation took place. Once the case was settled, CarMax exchanged a one year newer RAV4 with less mileage for the stolen one. It was even a higher trim level.
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This I’m saying doesn’t address your question but I felt compelled to voice my concern with something like this.
As a person who is deaf, I’m always wondering about noises coming from my car and I’m unable to hear them. This is a problem deaf people face as a driver.
So far I’m able to feel when the car is sick but I constantly hear people say how they hear a knocking sound coming from their car and I’m always concerned.
The problem has been solved .
I wouldn’t expect a loose hood hinge to produce the same sound when the hood is closed as compared to open. Did anyone look for the rattle? It was another opportunity to look for a transmission failure.
It’s great to hear you have the noise problem solved and the hood is bolted to the car with all the bolts. I’m skeptical that your missing bolts were due to intended sabotage, but there’s no way to know for sure.
My lawnmower wouldn’t start the other day, no matter how many times I pulled the cord, when it has started perfectly on the first pull for the past year. I took the carb apart for a look-see why. Not sabotage. Float valve stuck in the closed position. .
I take my blind friend to the Lighthouse (center for the blind in San Francisco). There’s usually someone there that knows of a solution for blind-related technical problems. Is there a facility like that catering to deaf folks in your area? My first thought would be for you to record the sound of your car’s engine idling, using your cell phone. That will give you a baseline to compare against, which might help a shop mechanic should a problem develop later. There are also fairly simple ways to visualize sound files. Google “display a wav file” for example. The most common allow you to see the amplitude vs time; however the better methods also allow you display the frequency of the sound vs time.
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