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Automobiles

How to Save Money: Get Sick!

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Heeee! The AMEX bill, which regularly exceeds $1200 (that’s in a good month…), came in at a piddling $955.02.

Hot diggety! I don’t remember when I’ve seen a bill for discretionary expenses under a thousand bucks. And how did this magical event occur?

Simple: being flat on my back half the month kept me out of my car! Not riding around in a car every day or two meant not going into stores. And what can you NOT do when you stay out of stores? Yup…NOT spend money.

Most to the point, I think, it kept  me out of Costco, where I can drop two hundred bucks without blinking an eye. Interestingly, that $955 included stocking up on expensive commercial dog food — I’m sure I spent at least a hundred bucks, trying to stash enough to last until I would feel like making real food for the pooches again, which I figured would be about a month after the surgical fact. It also included stocking up on food for myself: the chicken and the lamb shanks I prepared and froze, for example. And, come to think of it, a major wine run: at Total Wine I bought enough cheap, low-alcohol wine to last for the rest of my life.

Speaking of the which, I finally found not one but two reds that are more than respectable as table wines despite a fairly low alcohol content:

Château Bois Redon Bordeau Supérieur. 2012. Alcohol content: 13%, right on the upper border of acceptable. Flavor and bouquet are excellent. It’s a blend of 75% Merlot and 25% Cabernet Sauvignon. This stuff, while not expensive, does not normally fall into the “dirt cheap” range we covet. Total Wine has it on sale just now — I got it for around ten bucks, definitely worth the price.

Bellini Toscana Sangiovese. 2013. Alcohol content 12.5%, a little high but still better than any California reds you’ll see on the market. I also found this wine made a very nice accompaniment to steak, and later to some cheese and fruit. Got it for under ten dollah.

Red wines do not  benefit from lower wine content — in terms of palatibility, that is. However, these two specimens show it’s possible to make a decent red with less than 14% alcohol content.

Right now I have another sangiovese open: Pietro Sangiovese di Toscana. 2013. Its alcohol content is also 12.5%. I’d rate it as good enough for government work: not the greatest wine that ever came out of the cask, but an adequate table wine. It was very cheap: well under ten bucks.

For all around light swiggling, I continue to favor the Gazela vinho verde, a Portuguese white wine with an alcohol content of just 9%.  Sometimes this stuff can be slightly effervescent. It’s always light and crisp  — perfect for a warm day. Can’t wait till the weather gets hot: this will be the drink of choice for an Arizona summer afternoon.

So okay. Back to the subject at hand: the automobile and its influence on the average American’s finances. To wit: mine.

I decided to junk the scheme to buy a new vehicle and instead try to keep the Dog Chariot running for another 20,000 miles. So, the clunk is down at Chuck’s as we scribble, getting a new set of brake drums. Reasons for that decision:

1. I have NO clue how much the Adventures in Medical Science will end up costing me, and neither, it develops, does anyone at the Mayo. They just do not know, so complicated is our ludicrous pushmi-pullyu healthcare system. The only way to find out will be to wait until the last of the Medicare and Medigap payments come in and then pay whatever remains on the Mayo’s books. Though I’m told I may be able to negotiate that amount down, I figure it’s likely to come to four or five grand. That will bite into the car-buying budget… And not knowing to what effect, I think that’s one cliff I’d just as soon not jump off right this minute.

2. The five hundred bucks it’s going to cost to fix the brakes and the current oil leak? That’s a far cry from 26 or 30 grand for a new car! Why should I spend that kind of money while I still have a functional vehicle? One excuse I like to trot out, by way of justifying the scheme to buy a new car, is that I don’t trust the Chariot to drive around on day trips. But…hey…for 30 grand I could rent an awful lot of nice cars to bucket around the state!

3. I’m hardly driving the car anymore. Commuting to campus was the main mileage-burner for that crate. And now that all my courses are online, that cuts out three or four 20-mile trips a week. And while I was convalescing from the surgery, I think I made all of one (count it, 1) trip — down to the church — in more than two weeks.

That happened because I had stocked in food and household necessaries carefully, in preparation for what I expected would be a prolonged incapacitation. Once all that stuff was in the house and in the freezer, I didn’t really have to go anywhere. So I’m thinking I need to make that a regular habit: each month figure out what will be needed for the next 30 days, and avoid jumping in the car at short notice to run down to Costco or Safeway, both of them sinks of impulse buys. I think a lot of the overspending happens because I drive out whenever I think I want something rather than planning what I’ll need and restricting purchases, as much as possible, to trips dedicated to laying in what’s really needed.

4. In 2016 —  just another year or 18 months — the lightrail route that will come right past the ’hood will finally open. If the car runs another 20,000 miles, it should operate handily for two years…perfect.

I dislike riding public transportation, particularly when it passes through an area lined with dangerous slum apartments that house not only thugs and hoodlums but people who are crazy as loons and make pests of themselves. However…

• Now that I’m old, I can get a monthly cut-rate pass. It surely does cost a lot more than gasoline…but the longer it staves off having to lay down 30 grand for a new car, the more money it saves me.

• That lightrail line will go past a Sprouts (which I will shop in), an Albertson’s (don’t shop there; but Albertson’s has changed hands and so that store might be improved), a Fry’s (also probably a little too dangerous to shop there), a Target, a Costco, and (lo!!) the beloved AJ’s at Central and Camelback. With a motorized cart (which they’re required to let you take on the train!), I could in theory get a great deal of shopping done without ever burning an ounce of my own gasoline.

• And, also in theory, I could ride the train down to Maryland and walk a mile and a half to the church. That would give me three miles of walking each Sunday — wouldn’t dream of doing it at night, because that would be insensately unsafe). But at this time of year it would be easy and pleasant.

5. In 2016, I will be required to take a required minimum distribution from my big IRA. That could easily be as much as the proposed car would cost. Thus the car could double my taxable drawdown in 2015. And that does, decidedly, not sound like a very cheerful prospect. If I rent a car for day trips or longer junkets around the Southwest and use public transit for routine shopping, the Dog Chariot’s projected driving lifetime of 20,000 miles could last even more than two years. Possibly a lot more than two years. If, say, the vehicle didn’t have to be replaced for another four years, then I myself would have (at that point) a projected driving lifetime of about six or eight years. And then it would actually make sense to buy a used car that would tide me over to the end of my driving days, for a lot less than going out today and buying a new car that would run dependably until I’m 80 or so.

NEWS FLASH! Chuck just called to say the brake drums will only cost about $260, a far cry from his estimate of $500 a couple of months ago. He must be feeling sorry for me. 😉

He does have to figure out where the oil leak is and fix that. But I’ll betcha the whole job comes in at less than five hundred bucks.

 

Next on the Agenda…

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…is buying a car. Happy day.

Over at The Savvy Scott, Pauline describes her recent purchase of a Hyundai Tucson with 140,000 miles (!) on it. Pauline, the proprietor of Reach Financial Independence, evidently lives in Guatemala and decided to buy a car through an auction house in Orlando while vacationing in Florida, the costs being significantly lower and the chance of getting a decent car significantly higher when one buys in the US.

LOL! To say you’re less likely to get ripped off in Florida is to say something startling about Guatemala, eh? 😀

Later models of the Tucson are indeed very nice — it’s among those I’ve been considering — and Pauline is very pleased with her find. And she got a good price on it by purchasing at auction.

I’ve never bought a second-hand car from a dealer. My ex- and I got our Mercedes second-hand, but we bought it from one of his law partners. We knew where the guy lived. 😉 The prospect of coping with a used car salesman makes me shudder, and I can’t even imagine the risks entailed in buying at auction.

But given the outrageous cost of new cars, and the fact that they’re mostly equipped with so much unnecessary electronic frou-frou that you have to go back to school to learn now to drive one, I’m considering the possibility of a used car. One of my friends knows a car broker. If I can get him to give me a referral to that gent (and I don’t hate the gent), I’ll probably see if he can get me a late-model Toyota that comes with a six-banger.

Pauline points out all the perceived joys of buying second-hand: lower cost, less depreciation, lower insurance costs. In Arizona, we can add lower registration taxes, since these drop as a car ages. I can pay registration out of cash flow now; I’d have to draw down from savings to register a newer vehicle.

On the other hand…

If you drive your car until it falls apart, it will run for ten to twenty years (depending on how much you drive and how well you care for the vehicle). An old junker will have to be replaced in less than ten years — possibly less then five.

If you drive a car for ten years, you have ample time to set aside “car payments” in savings, accumulating enough to pay for the next car in cash.

If you buy new and keep the car for ten to fifteen years, depreciation is irrelevant. A reliable vehicle, such as a Toyota or a Honda, will give you your money’s worth over that period.

Over a fifteen-year lifetime, the cost of insurance and registration will drop into the sub-basement, whereas if you buy a five-year-old car every five years, these costs will never decrease significantly.

New cars tend to be safer, because they have up-to-date safety technology and because key components like brakes will not fail from age.

New cars come with warrantees, usually for 100,000 miles. Junkers do not — they’re pretty much guaranteed to cost you money for repairs.

A Hyundai that has 140,000 miles on the odometer may run for another 60,000 miles, give or take. That’s not very far. It certainly isn’t if you live in the US. Possibly it would be a good buy if you lived someplace that had decent public transit and amenities such as grocery stores within walking distance. But that certainly is not true in most US cities. Here, such a vehicle would be penny-wise and pound-foolish.

While I surely do resent having to pay more for a new car than my first house cost, I’m also uncomfortable with the downsides of buying a used vehicle.

I dunno. Maybe I’ll just get the Dog Chariot’s brakes fixed and try to coax it to run to 200,000 miles.

Car Shopping

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Toyota_Venza_--_NHTSA_2So this afternoon while cruising back into town after a meeting with a graphic designer, I decide to get off the I-17 at Bell Road, where there’s a long strip of car dealerships. The Toyota dealership up there is significantly less sleazy and more customer-friendly than the mid-town outfit, and I want to test-drive the Venza.

After lengthy standing around and gassing with the sales guy, this comes to pass. As a matter of fact, I get to drive both both the four-banger and the six, the salesman (being male) having decided that the Little Woman couldn’t possibly tell the difference.

Well, this little old lady can. And yeah, I still do prefer the six. Heh heh…50 to 90 in less time than it takes to draw a deep breath.

I like the Venza. It’s a pleasant car, modestly luxurious, sort of like a tall, bloated Camry. But I found myself thinking the same thing that I think about the newer Camry: it’s cramped in there.

Maybe it’s not the car; maybe it’s me. After fifteen years of driving a Sienna, maybe I’ve just become spoiled to all that extra space.

One other thing I didn’t care for about the Venza — or about the Tacoma pickup — is that when the back seats fold down, they don’t fit flush against anything. A gap remains between the folded-down seat back and the floor…and that gap is big enough for a corgi to fall into. Or for a bigger dog to stumble into and break a leg. Thanks, but no thanks.

I looked at a Sienna on the lot. Very nice. It doesn’t seem to have undergone much of a redesign since the 2000 model I’m still flogging across the roads. EXCEPT…it’s now billed as an eight-passenger vehicle. That would mean they must have an extra bench seat at the back, or else they’ve installed two more captain’s chairs. That presumably would make the vehicle longer than mine, which about fills up the garage. Since my washer & dryer are in the garage, the Sienna I’ve got is about as long as a vehicle can be and still fit in there.

The Sienna’s seats can be removed. And when you do that — as I’ve done with three of the four back seats in mine — you end up with a VAST cargo space. It really is awesome. You can carry just about anything in the back of a Sienna once you’ve taken out the seats. And it’s flat, so you can either let a dog run around in there or you can pack in a couple of dog crates (more than a couple, actually).

So I may go back later and revisit the Sienna. In a way, it’s a perfect compromise between a pickup and a passenger vehicle: plenty of room to haul gear and critters, and yet a comfortable ride.

Heh. Maybe I really do want a pickup. All that business about the proposed Ram 1500 was a bit of a joke. But…hey. The Ram has a crew cab with back seats that fold up, leaving you with a large interior space to stash dog cages or loose dogs, to say nothing of whatever other junk you’d like to haul around without leaving it out for passing sticky fingers. Plus its back seats are said to be comfortable with plenty of leg room and the ride is said to be car-like.

Still. It’s awfully large. And the price is high.

Not at all crazy about the Toyota’s dashboard. Honest to God. I do not want to go back to school for a bachelor’s in aviation technology to learn to drive the damn car. There is just too much computerized clutter in that thing.

For one thing, I personally do not need or want an animated electronic map. I know which way is north. And I rarely get lost.

I’m sure the GPS map distraction would be handy if you lived in the older cities of the East. But if you live anyplace in the Southwest that’s been heavily influenced by Mormons, then you live in a city or town that’s laid out in a grid. North/south; east/west. Such a city is extremely easy to navigate, and it’s almost impossible to get lost, unless you get into one of the ill-designed suburbs with swirling, serpentine residential streets.

Nor do I wish to have to point and click or tap a screen to operate the radio — one that offers an image of real radio controls. Why can’t I just have a real radio? Why can’t I have analogue everything, come to think of it? I don’t want to have to fiddle with a computer to turn on the air conditioner or unlock the doors.

Please. All I need is a key to turn the thing on (a button is cute, but…why?), a switch to turn the heat and air-conditioner on and off, a switch to turn the headlights on and off, a switch to lock and unlock the doors, a button to open and close the windows, a switch to turn on the radio, and a dial to tune in my favorite NPR and cowboy stations and no I do not need and am not going to pay for satellite radio.

What a curmudgeon, huh?

Maybe what I really need is a horse.

Why i hated teaching…and why the whole credit thing is ridiculous

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So, there’s a really bad blog headline, and here’s an even worse lede. 😉  Oh well. Spent about a third of the afternoon being reminded of why teaching f/t drove me batshit. Then went over to the credit union and was reminded of how bizarrely absurd (that’s “ridiculous,” dear Google bots) America’s credit rating and lending systems are.

Ridiculousness the First: My friend, the director of Heavenly Gardens’ journalism program, is trying to persuade the county’s junior college district, whose kingdom is VAST, to let her change the thrust of the program to include…well, some inkling of the future. She wants to teach digital media in addition to the old-fashioned, dying art of buggy-whip manufacture that is the content of most of our journalism courses.

This seems pretty reasonable, doesn’t it?

Print media are rapidly subsiding into irrelevance.
To keep our journalism programs alive, we are going to have to get with the times.
Getting with the times means adapting to the digital environment.
Therefore we need to teach journalism in digital media.

So sane. So easy. So fuckin’ impossible.

To pull this off, she has had to politick ALL OVER THE FREAKING DISTRICT, a monster entity, yea verily a GIANT SQUID that engrosses a territory larger than the City and County of Los Angeles. It has taken her months. Beeee-caause…wouldncha know it, the multitudinous campuses are full of aging faculty who a) do not want to learn a whole new approach to their subjects and b) most CERTAINLY do not want to have to rewrite their courses to fit the present reality, because (alas!) that would mean work.

You don’t even want to know the amount of work the woman has done to shove through the simplest, most commonsensical, most critical-to-the-district-programs’-survival strategy.

I know, because I’ve done this kind of thing myself, back when I worked f/t for the Great Desert University. If you are the entrepreneurial type, in any degree whatsoever, you are living in some kind of Hell when you endeavor to bring your talent and foresight into the field of teaching.

Ugh.

So that went on until almost 2 p.m. Many changes will be made in the magazine-writing course, all of them, IMHO, for the better.

From there, it was off to the credit union, for Ridiculousness the Second.

My car continues its odyssey toward oblivion. Its engine is now making crapping-out noises. I must buy a new car. I want a Toyota Venza with cream-colored leather seats and walnut dashboard trim and a six-banger. This is, in a word (or two), not cheap.

The credit union lady informed me that my credit score is 819 (take that!!!) and blithely qualified me for an astonishing $32,000. Kelly Blue Book says the Dog Chariot is worth around $2700. I probably can conjure a down payment of something between five and ten grand without having to raid savings. Interest rate is 2.2% at the CU.

I’m told some dealerships around here are still offering 0% interest.

So, the plan is this: even though I have enough cash, in theory, to pay for this thing out of pocket, it would be better at 0% to have Fidelity disburse the monthly payment, thereby leaving principal in investments, where it belongs.

I do not happen to believe that the Republicans will change their spots, and so expect within the next four to eight years to see investments go down the tubes again. But nevertheless would like to delay drawdowns to the extent possible. So, it looks like borrowing and paying out of the car-savings pot will be the strategy, especially if a 0% rate is forthcoming.

And now I must publish this without proofreading the thing because it’s almost time to race out the door for the evening event.

More to come…

Car to Chuck’s: Pray for a LONG Life

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Toyota_Sienna_--_07-09-2009Welp, the car is (belatedly) down at Chuck’s Auto Service, there to be refreshed for another year of survival.

Very nearly missed my chance: the ole Dog Chariot was supposed to arrive in his precincts at 8 a.m. But…a disadvantage of laying flat on your back day after day is that your computer is plugged into a bedroom outlet. After I let the dog out at dawn, I crawled back into the sack and started working on a client’s work.

The nose stayed on the grindstone till about 9 a.m., when I got hungry. Stumbled out to get the paper and was reminded of the leaking sprinkler head in front. Staggered back to the phone to call Gerardo and ask him to come fix it. He asked cuando? Looked at the calendar… Uh oh!

Called Chuck’s: Pete answered; said to bring it right down.

Flew toward the shop; turned around, flew back to the house to check to be sure I’d turned the fire off under the water kettle (whose contents I had imagined would be used to make coffee…); jumped back in the car; flew toward the shop.

Chuck drove me home and will bring the car back later today. This was good, in its way: it allowed him to get an earful of the squealing brakes. They just DID a brake job a few months ago.

Sort of. I think it was last in for an oil change in…uhm…January.

I’ve been putting off service because I thought I would buy a new car this summer. Then when all this medical sh!t  fell on my head, shopping for a car was out of the question.

And now buying a new car this summer or any time in the near future is out of the question. All the money I’d planned to use to buy the car is going to the Mayo Clinic.

Driving homeward, I said to Chuck that I need for the thing to run at least another two or three  years; possibly another five.

I’ve never owned a car this old! It is 14 years old. Still running like a top, though.

Well, that may not be true…the Mercedes may have been older. The number that sticks in my mind is 13 years; but it could have been longer. It also was running (expensively) well. The only reason we traded it in was the switch to unleaded gas. The thing ran on leaded, and we were told that unleaded would wreck the engine and we eventually would have to install a new one, which would cost as much as buying a new vehicle.

CeyBenz1972What a shame! It was SUCH a wonderful car, so beautiful…and holy MACKEREL the power that thing had! It was slow from a standing start, but at 65 mph all you had to do was breathe on the gas pedal and suddenly you’d be at 85. You have  never seen such acceleration in a big old galumphing sedan with walnut and leather trim.

Heh. We traded it in on a Toyota and never looked back.

Whatever. This year there’ll be no RAM  1500 with four doors and a six-banger for me.

On the other hand, every year I can put off buying a new car makes it more likely that the next vehicle will be the last one I’ll ever have to buy. So that’s good. I’ve got cash to buy one more car, but not enough to spring for two.

Hm. Maybe the next car should be a Mercedes…

 😉

 whoa there! Wait. a. minnit.

For less than it would cost to get this:

ChevyExterior

ChevyInterior

I could get this:

CeyBenz

CeyBenzInterior

Well, by golly. Every cloud has a silver lining, doesn’t it?

😆

w00t! New Car SCORED!

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Ford_Escape_XLSMy son’s, that is. Over the weekend, M’hijito drove up to Wickenburg, a small tourist trap about 55 miles from town, and bought himself a Ford Escape. And yesh, I was amazed that he went for an American car, since his tribe has been burned enough times by the things to make us all leery.

However, it’s a beautiful car, and he got an incredible deal, making it possible to afford a passel of bells and whistles, including leather upholstery(!). And I have to admit that Ford and Chevrolet are getting much better reviews than they used to — Edmunds and the other big reviewers do like the Escape.

Amazingly, he managed to wangle a 0%, no-money-down loan on the thing!

The beauty of this is that he’s been setting aside the equivalent of a car payment for the past few years, hoping to accrue enough to buy a vehicle in cash before his clunk craps out. Said kitty is invested in a Vanguard fund. What this means is that he’ll be able to withdraw just enough to pay the tab each month, while the balance of his car savings continues to earn interest.

This will allow him to continue investing that amount out of his cash flow. By the time the car is paid for, he’ll have at least as much in hand and probably more.

Probably more, because this is type of guy who’s likely to use whatever windfalls that come along to prepay principal, thereby accelerating the loan payoff.

Okay, that’s good, eh?

Well, it gets even more amazing.

With a printout of the Kelly Blue Book valuation, he actually managed to make money on the clunk!

Said clunk was falling apart and needed $1700 worth of repairs just to keep it running. Its previous owner wrecked it not once, but twice; owner’s dad and insurance company had it repaired, but still… 🙄

Its paint was pocked in the hailstorm we had a couple years ago and never repaired. M’hijito collected from the insurance company and pocketed the money…or, more likely, stashed the money in the car purchase fund.

It had something else happen to it — can’t remember what — for which M’hijito pocketed another insurance payment.

The car came to him through one of his dad’s law partners, whose son drove it through high school and then left it behind when he went off to college. Dad’s Partner wanted the unsightly thing gone from his driveway and so practically gave it away.

The dealer, of course, tried to lowball him on the trade-in. But when M’hijito waved the Kelly Blue Book printout in the air, voilà! To get him to drive that Escape off the lot, they offered him top dollar for the clunk!

So he figures that, in balance, he made about $2000 on the thing over the altogether too many years he’s been driving it.

And what about my own schemes to buy a new car?

Oh…I don’t know…and of course, when in doubt, don’t.

The Dog Chariot is still running well. Chuck the Wonder-Mechanic thinks it will go at least another 30,000 to 80,000 miles, relatively trouble-free. It’s so old, the registration gouge is now practically nil, and insurance premiums are also very low. It has a six-banger under the hood that goes a long way toward keeping me marginally safe on the homicidal streets of Phoenix, and the mileage said six-banger gets is not significantly worse than any other cross-over’s, even the now ubiquitous four-bangers.

All of these factoids make my craving for a new crossover or pickup look a lot more like a want than a need.

But given that I can afford a “want” — and if I could wangle a 0% loan myself, I could more than afford it — that Escape is pretty attractive.

The Honda CR-V, whose interior is even nicer and which really is a very pleasant vehicle, comes only with a four-banger. No upgrade is available, and a little four-cylinder engine…well. Not around here, thanks. KJG’s daughter and son-in-law, both of whom are engineers, bought one of the things and then thought better of it. They both have to commute on the freeways, and they found the CR-V underpowered for the purpose. They traded it in on a vehicle that would give them a fighting chance in the traffic.

I’m a fairly assertive driver, even in my old age, and I do not like being shoved around by the SOBs who populate the local roads. A car has gotta have enough power to give me some action when I need it.

The Escape also comes equipped with a four-cylinder engine. However, Ford has two turbo-charged versions that, according to Edmunds, provide acceptable power — one will crank out 240 hp — with little damage to the mileage ratings.  Price is comparable to the fancified versions of the Honda.

So that makes the vehicle a lot more attractive.

The only thing, really, that takes away from it are the letters F-O-R-D:

Fix

Or

Repair

Daily

1967 Ford Lemon
The Car of My Nightmares