Your five games rule is actually smart tbh. That gives everyone time to actually understand the flow and balance before messing with it. Most groups I see try one game on base rules, lose badly, and immediately start inventing new rules to fix their own bad luck or bad strategy. Then the whole game just becomes whatever the loudest person at the table wants it to be. The Catan trading thing is perfect example - people think they're making the game more "fair" but they're really just killing the early game momentum that makes Catan work. Would go even further and say you shouldn't even consider a house rule until everyone at the table has a solid grasp on what makes each move valuable. By then you usually realize the base game designers actually knew what they were doing lol.

Did you ever look up that study from UC San Francisco about how bed rest can actually make back problems worse? I read it when I was dealing with my own back issues and it was eye opening. They found that prolonged rest leads to muscle weakness which just makes the spine less stable over time. Kinda wild that doctors are still telling people to do nothing when the evidence is pretty clear about staying active in a safe way.

Piggy bank loan" is hilarious, I totally did the same thing but at least it worked.

Saving six bucks isn't gonna change your life.

My sister tried the same thing and ended up setting off her smoke detector at 6am. Her whole apartment building had to evacuate and she was standing outside in her robe holding a bag of burnt bacon.