Speaking of lowering maintenance costs, the ease of changing basic disc brakes, and do so without specialized tools would probably surprise a lot of people. Set of brakes for my Toyota is only $18, for maybe a half hours worth of work. Even the “cheap” brake places charge over 4x that ...
That is if you catch them before they start grinding your rotors.
Even then a rotor (Camry?) is $20 and requires no special tools. Never have rotors turned. They are cheap for most vehicles and the labor of turning them is as much as a new one.
I very rarely turned rotors in my shop. I’d rather sale a new rotor and discount the labor to be even.
“Do you want a new rotor or do you want me to fix your old one? Same price.”
You can cut some time off of that by compressing the caliper before you take it off. Pry bar in between the pad and rotor... about three seconds to compress it.