The Short List
Compares cars on what they actually cost per month, not on sticker price.
The Short List is private, so this page is a description rather than a door. It is a two-person household tool, it is access-controlled, and there is nothing here for a stranger to click.
What it does is rank vehicles on two different numbers instead of one. Cash out of pocket (loan, fuel, insurance, maintenance) answers whether you can make the payment. True cost (depreciation, tax and fees, interest, fuel, insurance, maintenance) answers which car was cheaper to have owned. They rank differently, and the gap between the two rankings is the actual decision. It also models things a spreadsheet usually skips, like Pennsylvania taxing the difference on a trade rather than the full price, which makes a trade-in worth more than its face value.
The reason it is listed here at all is the part that generalizes: every number in it is labelled by how much it should be trusted. Fuel economy and safety ratings come from federal APIs. Prices come from listings. Resale, maintenance ramp, and insurance are estimates, marked as estimates, and editable per vehicle, because a model that hides its guesses is worse than one that admits them.
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Occasional notes on what shipped and what the numbers said. No schedule, no marketing.