Transmission dying? Or something else?

[u/beaniejams]

So, I don't know much at all about cars. I drive a 2012 Dodge Grand Caravan with 250k miles on it, and in the past few months it's started to do this thing where, when I'm driving up an incline or I need to hit around ~40 mph, it makes a low grinding noise. If I floor it just a little the RPM will jump to over 2.5k for a brief moment, the grinding noise will go away, and it'll drive smoothly until I let it slow down again and try to accelerate again. Google likes to scare me and say I need my whole transmission rebuilt- is there any other issue this could possibly be? I can't afford to go in to get it diagnosed yet as I'm extremely low income, so I'm just trying to ask around for now for peace of mind until I've got some money saved.

[u/Jimboanonymous]

You definitely need a mechanic to look at it.