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…
A friend of mine liked the look of the Venza – but Consumer Reports had harsh words for it, I believe.
0% does exist – I took full advantage of it at the end of August when I upgraded from my 12.5 year old Pontiac Grand Am to my new shiny Mazda CX-5 – LOVE my new car! I walked out of the dealership with a shiny new car and no money out of pocket at all!
I feel faint….Let’s say the Venza winds up costing $35K with taxes , prep, transportation, etc, And you do put down $10K leaving $25K to finance . $25 K for 48 months with no interest is over $500 a month. And at the end of the 4 years that $35K car will be worth $17K…maybe…. I feel faint….
So do I. It is effing terrifying.
However, the Dog Chariot is not going to run forever.
I have another 15 or 20 years of viable driving life. In 10 years, I’ll be almost 80. If, as I expect, the upcoming boob treatments will permanently destroy my present vibrant, pill-free health, by the age of 80 I may be past the time when I can drive safely. But even if I hang in there a little longer than that, most people are unsafe on the road at 85.
The Dog Chariot is 15 years old. It has 128,000 miles on it. That averages out to 8533 miles a year. Before I retired, I averaged 10,000 miles a year. So we can figure I’m probably not even driving 8500 miles/year now. It’s probably more like 6,000: in 15 years that would add up to only 90,000 miles. If I stay well enough to drive to age 90, then in 20 years I would put 120,000 miles in this car.
So this means the next car will be my last car, unless it gets totaled in some competition with my fellow homicidal drivers.
So let’s take $32,000 (what I figure to be the cost of the coveted Venza) less $2700: that gives us a purchase price of $29,300. Add 9.5% for taxes (unless I can find the thing in some other county): $32,083. Add another thousand or so for registration: around $33,100.
Divide that by 15 years. Purchase price costs $2,206/year over the vehicle’s proposed lifetime: $183.88 a month. Divide it by 20 years, and you get an annual cost of $1,655, or $137.91 a month.
I could surely do without that.
By comparison, a 31-day rail/bus pass for seniors is $32, very cheap.
However, you get what you pay for: riding on the bus means long, long, LONG waits (one day I waited 45 minutes for a bus to come along) in temperatures that can rise to 118+ degrees. Most bus stops have no shade. Public transit is excruciatingly slow: it can take two hours to make what would be a 30-minute trip in your car. And if the local drivers are homicidal, the local public transit riders are no better company: I’ve never been on the lightrail when I haven’t seen someone who was falling-down drunk, so crazy he couldn’t figure out where he was, or plotzed senseless on drugs. Even if one had time to get around on buses and trains, the unpleasantness of it can only be described as off-putting.
So…I’m afraid that owning a car is part of the cost of doing business in Arizona.
If I bought a used car, I could save money up front, but the thing might not run the remaining 15 or 20 years of my driving life. As you point out, I might get a four-year-old Venza for $17,000 (Kelly pegs the cost of a certified pre-owned 2010 Venza at $18,962). Having to buy two older, cheaper cars instead of one new car strikes me as penny-wise and pound-foolish: It would add at least $5,000 to the cost of car ownership over the same period.
As you so aptly point out …. “the powers that be” have taken all the fun out of car ownership… And to add a little to the conversation…your new car is like $32K …. I paid $41K for my first house…two apartments no less WITH a capable tenant who wished to stay. Funny ….tis crazy times we live in!!!
Sure feels crazy, doesn’t it? We paid $33,000 for our first house — and that was more than my husband, an up-and-coming corporate lawyer at the time, felt we could afford!
Hm. Maybe the dogs and I can take up residence in this thing.
😆
Seriously, though…sometimes I think how fantastic it would be to sell the shack and get an RV or a well-tricked-out full-sized van and just DRIVE AWAY. Me and the dawgs, on the road forever!
Reality intrudes, though: those things cost almost as much as a house, and they take as much work and expense to maintain as a house does, too!
My first thought, also, was to buy slightly used, but then I thought that you need to do whatever makes you feel safe. And woman, this is why you have been so careful and saved so stringently all these years. NOT to leave a nice legacy. Your capable son seems to be doing okay financially and is not supporting any wee ones. It is time to take care of yourself, and if having this particular car makes you feel safe and taken care of then get ye to the dealership and drive it home.
This is what the big retirement stash is for; cars, home repairs and medical stuff.
Anne is right …at this point in your life if you want it….you should have it. BUT…just ran the numbers a bit…If you only drive 6000 miles like you think you will, based on your numbers on the car’s life and the gas mileage this car should achieve, it should run you about 54 cents mile just in gas and depreciation….that doesn’t count insurance….repairs…etc…I’m betting this will push the $/mile to 75 cents….Ten miles to the store and ten miles back…there goes $15. Pretty soon this is serious dough…Have ya considered ditching the car and biking?
Wouldn’t that be wonderful? The biking, I mean.
The roads are unsafe for bicyclists, even though a few aggressive bikers get out there and block the traffic. It’s very dangerous to do so.
One could bicycle along the canal. The only store on the canal is a Sprouts, but it could be done. That would give you some decent exercise and also a little fun. But it would be out of the question in the summer and unsafe after dark at any time of year.
With only 128K on the Sienna, it still has lots of life in it. Easily 200K or more. With driving so little, it will last for quite a while. It has the Camry engine. Those can go 250K. I am running a 99 Sienna with 117K and still going strong. Also, I believe gas will keep rising in price. If you must buy new/different go with something smaller and cheaper that has a hatchback, like Yaris, Prius, Mazda. Just my 2 cents….
Chuck the Mechanic Extraordinaire also believes the car may run to 200,000 miles; he’s sure it’ll last to 150,000.
It makes me nervous, though. It’s important to note that I do live alone and there’s no one to help me. Though my insurance does have roadside assistance, that requires that the cell phone I never use be charged up when the car craps out, which sooner or later it will. Being stuck in a broke-down car in 118-degree heat (upwards of 120 degrees on the asphalt) would be a predicament similar to being stuck in a Minnesota blizzard: both are very uncomfortable and even potentially life-threatening.
That’s remarkable to keep a car running since 1999 in a part of the country where they have to salt the roads! You must take meticulously good care of your vehicle.
Mileage cars go now amazes me as well. A guy I manage rental property for is driving a 13 year old Ford Explorer with almost 300K miles on it…with no major problems. When looking for a used car for DD2 I was amazed at the number cars for sale with 150-200K miles on them. Of course if and when the “dog chariot” craps out the mechanic is gonna say …”who’d a thunk it”. …
Three hunnert thousand miles on a FORD? My Ford was lucky to make it through three thousand miles. Hold the “hundred.”
Hm. If a Ford can go that far, how far can a Toyota go? Wonder if we can get 500,000 miles out of the clunk?
The guys nickname for the car is the “Ford Exploder”….LOL.
LOL! So do we still say FORD stands for “Fix or Repair Daily”?
That was literally true of my lemony Fairlane. Fortunately we lived within walking distance of the dealership. The damn car spent more time there than it did in our apartment carport.
Well it does have a little rust on the floor board by the door and few other places. Overall though it still looks decent. It helps that the bottom panel on these is plastic.I try to keep it garaged in the winter. It’s outside the rest of the year. I don’t even wash it near as often as I should. IMHO you are not even close to needing a new car 😉
Slave labor is not available in Middle East. Will you do kindle edition? Of Fire Rider maybe?
I bought my current car — a 2009 Toyota Prius — with cash back in 2013. However, the car I had before that one was a Saturn that I bought using 0% interest and paying no money down (minus the small amount I was given for my trade-in). I think letting someone else pay for your financing is a great idea. IF you find that you need to pay it off you should be able to do so anyway, per your analysis. Go for it!