A bunch of questions

Some method to the madness. IMO, you should've stated this before.

(unless maybe it was

Ha!, I *wish*!

but all told, the cost of all your vehicles has been a tidy

Or sum.

Now, is it possible you've done as much as you could to make your home

Nope.

and buying or thinking of buying a Prius is

Nope.

Cathy

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Reply to
Cathy F.
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Sorry - the irony is too much!

"Do I know what rhetorical means?" - Homer Simpson

Reply to
Michael Pardee

If you wish, you can turn them on when the car is delivered and leave them on as long as you exit the car through the driver's door. Better yet, if you get the expensive bulbs, they hardly take any energy and won't have a noticeable impact on fuel economy. Seems to me they are about 17 watts/bulb.

Reply to
Bill

I've made car payments my entire life and have paid cash for every car I've owned. I made those payments to myself, of course, so every now and then a car was free. Do the math.

Reply to
Bill

Ditto. Though I borrowed money from a CU for my /first/ new car 36 years ago. I also had to borrow a bit from myself last year when I bought my Avalon because I was not due for a new car for another couple of years, and because the top-end Avalon cost more than I had expected to spend (worth every penny.) My 12-year-old Accord did not know that it was not due for replacement, however, and it became problematical.

For my Prius I borrowed from myself again, because the purchase was waaay out-of-cycle (whimsy) but it was a relatively small loan and I was able to pay myself off quickly.

This system does not require wealth (as my example shows!) but it requires discipline. I make payments to my accounts as strictly as I would if a bank was threatening to send the repo man. I have not yet had to repossess one of my own cars...

Davoud

Reply to
Davoud

Great! Yep, all one has to do is postpone the purchase of that first car and make every payment to themselves faithfully thereafter. It's not that easy with a house, of course, but I only borrowed money against the first one, invested some energy, made a nice profit and paid cash for every one after that.

Reply to
Bill

I understand the wisdom & workings of this - but.... how does one postpone the purchase of a first car? If living in a metropolitan area that has good public transport, yes, possible. But otherwise... ?

When I read the first post, re: having had no car loans & saving faithfully for each car, I thought: "Okay, but how about the very first one - there's a huge sticking point." Starting out w/job & making small salary, maybe paying off student loans.... an accomplishment to pay the rent, groceries, & utilities - no available lump sum big enough to purchase a car sans a loan.

Cathy

Reply to
Cathy F.

We went through a long period when the tax man thought we were rich but we could barely afford to feed our family - $65 for a month's groceries for a family of 4 is tough. There is no way to go through a period like that with the "pay yourself" plan - we couldn't afford to operate a car, much less make payments. We had been married ten years before we made car payments at all.

Mike

Reply to
Michael Pardee

For me it was a combination of life choices. Enlisting in the military made a car unnecessary while saving money. The subsequent college years were the toughest financially but postponing marriage and children got me through that.

Reply to
Bill

I don't think there was ever a time we would have been ready for our first child. He had a constellation of medical problems, but the asthma was the most troublesome. The out-of-pocket expenses consumed a quarter of our gross income (more than our house payment and food budget combined; only taxes were a bigger part of our expenses) until I got a second job and changed my first to a better paying job. When he was 12 he spent 5 months in a hospital in Denver, and seeing the bill with my name at the top and $200K at the bottom was an unpleasant experience. Paul Harvey quotes somebody whose name I didn't recognize: "Having children makes us all hostages to Fate."

Mike

Reply to
Michael Pardee

Too bad we didn't follow the lead of every other modern nation on the planet. National health care would have spread those costs across our society. Yes, some of us would have paid a little more, but in a great society the poorest should have food, clothing, housing and health care.

Reply to
Bill

Bill:

Cathy F:

Maybe he meant postpone the purchase of the second car?

No sticking point. Follow my lead: I borrowed for my first new car, paid it off as quickly as I could, then began saving for my next car (what we have referred to as making car payments to oneself.) I kept the first car until I had enough money to pay cash for its replacement; in fact I had more than enough by the time I was ready to change cars, so I was able to buy something a little better than I might otherwise have gotten. The thing about this technique is that you don't need to have started with your first car. You can start now.

As soon as the second one is bought for cash it gets easier because /all/ of the "payments" go to savings and nothing is lost to interest. If one is not wealthy this means keeping your cars longer than your neighbours do. So what? Many of mine are a bit smug about getting a new car every two-three years, but who's the smart one!? What they don't realize is that I'm spending less on cars + interest than they are /and/ I'm driving nicer cars -- cars that don't /need/ to be replaced every two years. The most laughable of all is the guy who drives nothing but Cadillacs. (No chance he'll see this!) He changes them like I change socks. He'll drive his two-year-old Caddy down the street and it'll be making all kinds of expensive noises. Pretty soon he's got a new one and is proud of himself for being smart enough to drive a Caddy. Doesn't understand what's happened to GM or why it has happened.

Davoud

Reply to
Davoud

Looking to win a vacation in Azerbaijan courtesy of CIA Rendition Travel, Inc. are you, Mr. Enemy of the State and friend of Bin Laden?

Davoud

Reply to
Davoud

Nope, from another post he meant the first car, but turns out what he was doing at that point in his life allowed for him to save & he didn't need a car right then.

No, I meant it'd be a sticking point if one paid cash for *all* cars, incl. the first one.

Ha! Right now I'm making extra payments on my mortgage's principal, plus dumping as much as I can into my TDA, since retirement's on the horizon. I

*could* save even a little more, but am not willing to go back & live on the super-strict budget I lived on for umpteen years in the past. As it is, I'm going to up my TDA contributions even more next year, but as of now will be making the same salary as this year & last (lack of overdue contract settlement at this point).

I keep my cars approx. 6 years each.

Many of mine are a bit smug about getting a new

I've been driving Japanese cars since '76. Had a Plymouth Duster as my first car & it had a great engine, but the body really rusted... By that point the American car makers were paying no attention to the writing on the wall, & I said forget it - I'm going to go for best quality for the least outlay. Which led me away from American made cars...

Cathy

Reply to
Cathy F.

No criticism. That wouldn't make sense for me, though. Recent cars:

1991 Toyota pickup: 13 years, still good, got bored, gave it to a friend. Honda Accord: 10 years, donated to needy person. 1992 Mazda Miata: 14 years/low mileage (still have it) and will give it to my niece four years from now when she turns 16, providing her parents approve. 2004 Nissan Titan: Two years, traded for Prius .

Davoud

Reply to
Davoud

Reply to
mark digital

I explained why I keep them for ~6 years in another post. 1) I can drive them for 2 - 3 years loan-free, and 2) at 6 years they've hit the point where I need to either sell them & get a decent price to put toward my the down-payment of my next car, or else keep it & run it into the ground. It's the point before the resale/trade-in price is going to really start to drop off.

Plus - I don't know where you live, but I'm in the NE, & body rust and its upkeep tends to become a problem after that. The car may run well, but the body starts to need constant attention.

Cathy

Recent cars:

Reply to
Cathy F.

They used to deduct the cost of these vacations from our pay but now China pays for them and puts it on our tab.

Reply to
Bill

If he had been under national health care he would not have been approved for the hospital stay and would have died a few years later when the effects caught up with him - 100% certainty, according to the doctor, who convinced us we had to do what we had to do. He who pays the piper calls the tune. That is why my insurance company (BCBS) only preapproved 3 days and approved day by day, then cut off coverage after 8 days. He wasn't critically ill but was on no fewer than 17 medications, managed by the best allergy practice in Phoenix. The doctor knew most of the medications weren't helping and some were probably hurting but couldn't back off in an outpatient setting. Within the first month in the hospital he was down to about a half dozen meds and was off prednisone for the first time in 6 years. At the end of is stay he was down to something like 4 or 5 meds and only inhaled steroids. More important, his asthma could be considered managed for the first time in his life. That is what managed health care, either HMOs or socialized medicine, do worst of all.

About ten years ago he moved to Washington state with his fiancee. While there the back pain he had been fighting for a couple years became disabling, so he turned to Medicaid. So few options were approved for his treatment that he deteriorated, was put on morphine and switched to methadone. When he returned here 3 years ago he was in pain, addicted to methadone and had been unemployed for 5 years. We spent $2K from our own pockets in the first few months to pursue effective treatment - something Medicaid never did. Finally a single appointment with a physical therapist got him the first accurate diagnosis and the first effective treatment he had ever had: a pinched nerve in his middle back caused by the effects of prednisone while he was growing. A couple chiropractor sessions and some prescribed exercises worked the miracle he was hoping for. He has been working in an eyeglass lab for two years now and has not yet missed a day of work because of back pain. It took two years to wean from methadone, but he has completely recovered now from the mess Medicaid made. God only knows how much money the state of Washington wasted doing nothing good at all. Now he is a taxpayer instead of a dependent of the state.

I know this whole subject is completely off-topic, but the hoax of public health care hits too close to home for me.

Mike

Reply to
Michael Pardee

What if there no such thing as a rhetorical question? --Anon

Reply to
Michelle Steiner

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