My buddy Marcus dropped $60 on a laser cut insert for Gloomhaven and his wife gave him crap for a week. Two months later she bought one for their Terraforming Mars setup because she got tired of hunting down cubes.

Why would you shim a toilet up off the floor when the flange was already too low? That gap under the base is just a place for water to sit and rot the subfloor, and you are selling this house next spring. A half inch of shims means an inspector or a buyer's plumber pokes at it and now you are pulling the toilet anyway, except now you have silicone smeared everywhere and a flange that still does not meet code. Cutting out a cast iron flange is not that scary, you can get a socket flange or a repair ring that bolts right over the pipe without touching the iron. You spent 9 hours and three store trips to save yourself two hours with a grinder or a drill. The smart call was fixing it once, not stacking plastic and hoping the wax holds until closing.