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How are you going to spend your stimulus money?

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by DanOregon, Mar 26, 2020.

  1. BTExpress

    BTExpress Well-Known Member

    Well, when I'm tsar president, my first two executive orders:

    No mortgage can be longer than 15 years.
    No auto loan can be longer than 3 years.

    When you're finished paying that mortgage, THEN you can use the equity to buy the bigger house you wanted before but really couldn't afford.
     
  2. Chef2

    Chef2 Well-Known Member

    Jeep.
    84 months.
    No interest.
     
  3. BTExpress

    BTExpress Well-Known Member

    Of course, the life expectancy of a Jeep is 83 months . . . :)
     
    Chef2 likes this.
  4. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    The margins on a new car sale for the dealer are pretty tiny. The manufacturer sells the cars to the dealership at whatever invoice price minus dealer incentives they are working with at the time. The car then becomes the dealer's problem. Every day it sits on their lot is lost money for them -- they are financing their inventory. So as long as they can make a small margin on a sale, the dealership itself has incentive to get rid of it and move on to the next car.

    The monkey in that wrench is that dealerships don't earn much on car sales. ... but they do earn a ton on financing their car sales. So that is preferable, of course. Most people buying a car don't seem to understand this. They go in there thinking about what their monthly payment is going to be, not how much they are actually going to pay for the car relative to what they could have paid. So the incentive for the dealership is to make their money on financing cars.

    You were still a good customer to most dealerships (the person who owns the dealership), but NOT an ideal customer for the the salesman selling the car, if that makes sense. They get commissions and there is not much commission to them for working with you without running you through a lot of BS.

    My strategy on buying new cars -- and I started relatively late at buying cars, but figured out the game fairly quickly. ... I go out and test drive a bunch of cars, decide what I want, know exactly the car I want -- right down to the package, color, etc. I visited the dealership only to test drive cars. ... and once I knew what I wanted, I had no intention of stepping foot into a dealership again.

    It's easy to find out the invoice price of a car nowadays (not MSRP, which is a ridiculous number, but the dealer invoice price). It's a starting point. You will never know what the dealer incentive packages are at any given time, which can lower the dealer price a lot, and they can even vary depending on your specific area of the country. But do as much internet research as you can to try to figure out how much the car you want is actually selling for. Assume that the low end is somewhere around 2 to 3 percent over the dealer's cost.

    Like you, I was paying cash. And I just hit the phones: "I want this car, with this package. This is how much I am willing to pay, everything included. You can add a dozen asswiping fees if it suits you, or if you need to play games about this, but the bottom line cost, minus tax and title, needs to be $X. I am not coming into your dealership. I am calling every dealer reasonably nearby. First one who has the car I want at the right price, gets a fast deal. Fax or e-mail me the contract, I will give you a credit card for a deposit to lock myself in and I will be in within a day with the rest of your money.

    My experience was that on popular cars it was difficult to get the exact options I wanted in anyone's inventory when I called. But if they had a car that was close, even with a bunch of factory options I didn't want, but that they had to keep attached to the car to make the sale, they would still meet my price and throw in the useless options that I wouldn't have chosen to pay for. About 85 percent of those calls got me pure bullshit, but I moved on very quickly. I have now bought 3 cars that way, and each time I just had to find a dealer who understood that I was going to hang up the phone and move on. Each time it took about a week to two weeks, but it just took one who had a car on his lot that he was OK with moving as long as it was a QUICK, no hassle sale.
     
    PaperDoll likes this.
  5. Michael_ Gee

    Michael_ Gee Well-Known Member

    I followed much the same formula when I bought my new (well, two years old now) Subaru Forester with a couple exceptions. Did most of the work online, and waited two weeks for a dealership to get a car with the color I wanted.
     
    Donny in his element likes this.
  6. PaperDoll

    PaperDoll Well-Known Member

    Maybe I'll use the stimulus payment on the summer vacation I planned but haven't booked yet. Or something over Winter Break.

    I wonder how essential companies are going to handle employees who are suddenly not taking time off now, leaving a lot of people owed PTO and no way to use it. Unless they are taking vacation because they can't work from home while homeschooling their kids?

    I financed my last two cars, because it was zero percent and I could build my credit rating. I didn't realize I was doing the salesman a favor. :eek:

    Has anyone mentioned the joy of car shopping while female? I have brought male friends with me on more than one occasion -- including at least one who knew cars! -- and instructed them to answer every question with, "It's her money and her car, ask her." One dealership that was particularly egregious about that, we walked.

    Many years ago, a salesman found out what I do for a living -- I do test drives near the office and buy near home -- called me Lois Lane, and then sent me a thank-you note afterward asking me out. Not only did I not buy that car, I got the business reporter to do a story on crappy car dealerships in the area. :rolleyes:
     
  7. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

    I once had a Finance Guy tell me the monthly payment., which seemed high.

    I pulled out an iPad, called up a website, typed in X for the price, Y for the interest and Z for the length of the term. Looked at Finance Guy and confirmed the numbers with him. He agreed, I hit calculate, and it was $8 a month less.

    I showed FG the monthly payment, and he scoffed and wanted to know where I came up with the number. Told him the website, then offered to check on a different website. Put in the same numbers, and came up $8/month less again.

    FG actually points to his computer and says that his computer is telling him what the monthly payment is, with the same numbers. I counter that my iPad is telling me differently, ask him why his computer should take precedence and I ask to see what is in his computer and how he calculated it, and he refuses.

    Then he excuses himself (which I always find funny with car deals), comes back, and actually says, “It’s just $8 a month. Are you going to lose this car for $8 a month? And if the eight bucks are a big deal, we can work to make the monthly cost lower.”

    So I reply,”Yeah, it’s $8 a month. That’s $96 a year. Why am I paying $96 a year extra, which will be about $400 extra over this loan, when two websites tell me I don’t have to? And I’m not interested in extending the loan further.”

    He goes back again to his manager or whomever, comes back, and starts tapping away on his computer. After a few minutes, he prints out the sheet, and hands it to me to sign. The payments were $8 less per month.

    He also was an unhappy Finance Guy.
     
    Last edited: Mar 29, 2020
  8. Monday Morning Sportswriter

    Monday Morning Sportswriter Well-Known Member

    We went looking for a new minivan years ago. We found what we wanted at a bad dealership that we would never buy from and planned to have our friend’s dealership get the car for us.

    But I couldn’t resist seeing how dishonest the bad dealership would be.

    We drove the car and the salesman told us there was a special 0 percent financing available. He came back with numbers. Sticker was $23,500. His financing math worked out to $24,000+.

    Our friend’s dealership got the car for us the next day. Paid just over $18,000.
     
    Neutral Corner likes this.
  9. micropolitan guy

    micropolitan guy Well-Known Member

    My wife bought a new Honda in 2017 with a seven-year loan at 0.9 percent interest, the monthly payments were amazingly low. Interest rates were significantly higher for shorter-term loans. She easily made double or triple payments and had it paid off in less than three years, having paid almost nothing in interest. Pretty smart move.
     
  10. JC

    JC Well-Known Member

    At 0 percent interest, why not?
     
    ChrisLong likes this.
  11. MileHigh

    MileHigh Moderator Staff Member

    I did the same thing in 2011 with a six-year loan at 0.9 percent interest. Made extra payments and was done in just short of four.
     
  12. WriteThinking

    WriteThinking Well-Known Member

    Thank you. I've been receiving multiple phone calls and emails lately from the dealership where I got my new 2017 Ford Fiesta three years ago, encouraging me to extend the original three-year warranty. I haven't responded but have been wondering if maybe I should do it. Just in case, like you said.

    But I think I'll go with my initial instincts and not get it.
     
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