My Experience With Buying a Car From a Dealership
July 18, 2007 by Erik Folgate
Filed under Cars
My first experience with buying a car on a dealer’s lot came a couple of weeks ago. My 1995 Nissan Altima had come to its end. A big, huge, hairy truck plowed into the Altima in a parking lot and pretty much totaled the car. It was actually a blessing, because then I didn’t have to spend the money fixing it up to make it pretty enouh to sell. I’ve always had clunker cars up until now, so buying a car at a dealership was a very new experience. I don’t like buying new cars, so I went to an “up-scale” used car lot, if there is such a thing. My wife and I went back and forth to different dealerships looking at full-size sedans and a couple of small SUVs. We started looking at 2006 Hyundai Sonatas because they were in our price range, they looked nice, and they are a very smooth drive. Plus, we could get a Sonata with a V6 engine that was in our price range. I was ang. little skeptical about buying a Korean car with the track record it has had in the past, but Hyundai has definitely separated itself from Kia by a mile. Many reviews by magazines like Motor Trend and Car Buying Guide say that Hyundai is getting closer and closer to Toyota and Honda type quality. I know, it’s hard to believe, but all you really need to do is drive a newer Hyundai, and you’ll see what they are saying. So, we found the Sonata that we really liked. It was a nice, midnight blue color, had about 30k miles, and the interior was very clean. And so begins the adventure. Here are a few things that I did to help prepare myself for negotiating and buying my “new” used car.
The 11 Principles Series: Educate Yourself About Buying Cars, Real Estate, and Financial Products
July 10, 2007 by Erik Folgate
Filed under Cars, Consumer News, Real Estate
Educating yourself is the key phrase in this installment of the “11 Principles of a Money Crasher” series. If you want to save money and ultimately be wealthy when you retire, then you need to be an educated consumer. Educated consumers get better deals on the large purchases made during the course of one’s life. I’m talking about cars, real estate, boats, and also insurance products. Insurance is a HUGE expense over the span of one’s life, because you will ALWAYS need to carry auto, homeowner’s, and health insurance. There’s also term life insurance, long-term disability insurance, and renter’s insurance that people pay every year. The people that just randomly point at a car or an insurance product are the ones that get ripped off. I’m not saying that you need to become the ultimate negotiator and take courses at your local community college about insurance, but you need to get familiar with these large purchases. The power of the internet has made it so absolutely no one has the excuse that he or she could not do any research on cars, real estate, insurance, or other big ticket items. The information is there at your fingertips. If you decided to cut your internet out of your house, you can STILL get it for free at the library. This article would be brutal to go into great detail about these big ticket items, so I will give you a brief overview of each and reference some of my most popular articles in these subjects for you to reference.
Save Money And Get Out of Your Car Lease
June 8, 2007 by Erik Folgate
Filed under Cars, Credit and Debt, Spending and Saving
It’s no secret that our wallets are really taking a hit from the astronomical gas prices. My wife and I both own small cars, so we do not get hit as hard as people with trucks and SUVs. Did you recently lease a truck, SUV, or other gas guzzling car? Are you trying to find a way out of the lease? CNN Money has a great article about how to get out of your SUV lease. Popular websites such as Lease Trader and Swap A Lease will help you transfer over your lease to someone else.
Give Teenagers An Incentive To Save Money
May 8, 2007 by Erik Folgate
Filed under Cars, Kids and Money, Spending and Saving
The old cliche, “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”, really hits home when it comes to personal finance. The older we get, the more set we become in our habits whether its the ability to save money, biting our nails, or cursing like a sailor. One of my passions to help spread good, sound financial principles to young people across America. So few high school and college students graduate without any knowledge about how to manage their own money. They may learn how the stock market works, but they have no concept about personal investment theory, putting together a budget, buying a house, or saving money for the long term. It’s time for my generation to step up and do something about it. We need to take action and help middle school and high school students understand how to manage and save money. One of the best ways to help a teenager learn about saving money is to give them an incentive to save it. One of the biggest items that a teenager craves when they turn 16 is buying that first car. It’s more than wanting a sweet looking car, it’s about freedom. Parents go nuts thinking about the freedom it gives that teenager, and teenagers salivate over the thought of that freedom. You can use the purchase of a car as a learning tool by setting up a savings program for it.
Seven Reasons Why Leasing A Car Is A Bad Deal
April 18, 2007 by Erik Folgate
Filed under Cars
It may be obvious to most of you that leasing a car is a bad deal, but sometimes we need to be reminded why it’s a bad deal. Car leasing has become incredibly popular in the past 10 years. Car dealerships hook you onto a monthly payment, but they keep the car as an asset. The car is never your asset until the lease period is up and you choose the option to buy the car. A car payment that would normally be $399 a month may be $249 a month, which is very appealing to those who insist on driving a new car. Here’s my seven reasons why leasing a car is ALWAYS a bad deal:
How to Get Out of an Upside Down Car Loan
March 13, 2007 by Erik Folgate
Filed under Cars, Credit and Debt
Being upside down on a car loan is becoming more common every year as car dealerships will finance just about everyone that walks through their door. What does it mean to be upside down on your loan? It is when you buy a car for $20,000, you owe $18,500 on the car after one year, but it can only be resold for $16,000 after one year. So, if you sell the car, then you’ll still be in the hole $2,500 after you sell the car. This is precisely why I hate car loans. Cars will ALWAYS depreciate faster than we can pay them off. As long as they have engines inside them, they’re going to drop like a rock in price.
Pimpin’ Your Ride Is Not a Wise Financial Decision
January 12, 2007 by Erik Folgate
Filed under Cars, Investing, Random, Spending and Saving
I’m sure that most of you have seen the show on MTV, “Pimp My Ride”. It’s a great show. Some of the stuff they do to those cars is sick. Some of my personal favorites were the waterfall/river running through the middle of the interior of the car, and another car where they turned the entire trunk into a sweet karaoke machine. Tricking out a car has become wildly popular over the past decade. Honda Civics with 22″ rims, and Eldorados with LCD monitors and playstations installed. Young people love to pour money into their cars, but is it worth it?
The Car Dilemma
April 17, 2006 by Erik Folgate
Filed under Cars, Random
I’ve been driving a ‘95 Nissan Altima for about the past 2 and a half years now. The first year was great. I had no problems with it. But in the past 9 months, the alternator, the starter, the power windows, the A/C and now the radiator have had to be replaced in this car. I still haven’t fixed the A/C or the power windows. The radiator cracking was like the last straw for me as I had to call my mother-in-law to pick us up off the side of the road while trying to make it back to our house after Easter.
