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Selling Your Car

: English: Jalopy car in Joshua Tree National Park in Hidden Valley Campground (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When it’s time to replace your car, most people focus on the new car, instead of the old, but that is ignoring real money. Your old car–unless it has disintegrated–still has value. Sometimes, it’s just time to ask yourself, “When should I sell my car?”

When you’re looking to sell your car (like with We Will Buy Your Car), you generally have several options:

Tow & crush. If your car has been wrecked, doesn’t run, or is just old and beat up, you may be stuck with calling a junkyard and accepting $50 for them to pick up your car and crush it for scrap.
Trade it in. This is probably the least hassle, but–other than #1–doesn’t pay well. Dealerships are willing to pay something under what they will get at a wholesale auction, which is quite a bit less than the blue book value.
Sell it yourself. Now you’re thinking, “He’s going to buy my car! Oh, bother.” It can be a pain, but it’s also the best way to get a decent price for your wheels.

When you sell your car, there are a few things to keep in mind, much like when you sell something on Craigslist.

Don’t be alone. There are bad people in the world, but they don’t like witnesses. Bad things are much less likely to happen if you have company.
Know your price. Specifically, know three price: your dream price, the price that would make you happy, and the absolute lowest price you are willing to accept. Make sure you figure these numbers out ahead of time. Know what you are comfortable with before it comes time to close the deal.
Check IDs. The buyer is going to want to test-drive your car. That’s fine, but you want to make sure you know who is driving off in your car. “Officer, Sumdood took my car. He was wearing jeans.” That won’t get your car back.
Clean it up. Get the car detailed before you show it to a potential buyer. A sparkling-clean car will almost always bring in a few hundred extra dollars. It’s well worth the expense.

Following this plan should make the sale go as smoothly as possible and bring you the most possible money.

Readers, what have you done to dispose of an old car?

This is a sponsored post written to provide some insight into the world of used car retail.

Lamar Odom: The Cost of Addiction

Gossip

Rumours swirl around Lamar Odom and Khloe Kardashian that their marriage is in trouble due to the basketball star’s addiction to recreational drugs. The couple has not been spotted together since June, and Kardashian has been photographed recently not wearing her wedding ring. On Sunday, August 25, TMZ reported that Odom had been missing for 72 hours after a dispute with Kardashian that some say was a failed intervention.

Los Angeles Hotel

On Monday, August 26, ESPN reported that Odom’s agent, Jeff Schwartz, claimed that Odom was in a Los Angeles hotel and that friends were attempting to get him help for a drug problem that the agent declined to explain further. The agent also said that Kardashian knew Odom’s whereabouts. Kardashian herself tweeted that she was unhappy with the news reports about her family, but failed to elaborate on whether the reports were true or false. ( http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/9601746/agent-disputes-report-saying-lamar-odom-missing)

History of Drug Probems

In 2001, Odom violated NBA drug policies twice in eight months, apologizing at a press conference after the second offense. Odom claimed he did not have a drug problem and was only guilty of smoking marijuana. Odom often speaks of losing his mother to colon cancer at the age of 12 and his father’s heroin addiction, eventually moving in with his grandmother. In 2006, Odom’s son, Jayden, died of sudden infant death syndrome. In 2011, a cousin who Odom was close to died of gunshot wounds in New York, and just two days after the cousin’s funeral, Odom was involved in a car accident that resulted in the death of a teenager. Odom’s chauffer driven SUV collided with a motorcycle, causing the bike to go out of control and strike a 15-year old pedestrian who died of head injuries the next day. (http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/02/sports/la-sp-lamar-odom-accident-20110803). Odom took a 10-day leave of absence from the Dallas Mavericks, claiming his father was ill right after the incident.

Clash over Partying

Odom Shooting (Photo credit: compujeramey)

According to insiders, Odom and Kardashian have often clashed over his partying, but that she had kept his addictions secret from her family. According to many who have known Odom well, when things are difficult for him, he likes to get away and hide, which is what some say he did when he took leave from the Mavericks and just recently when he disappeared for a few days. (http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20728355,00.html) Insiders are reporting that Kardashian is contemplating divorce, which will be costly for Odom as there is a strong infidelity clause in the couple’s prenuptial agreement, and there are rumors that Odom has been unfaithful.

High Cost of Addiction

Most of the rumors surrounding the Kardashian Odom marriage are related to the fact that two women have come forward claiming affairs with Odom while he was married to Kardashian, and not due to his drug use. However, the fact that there is a strong fidelity clause in the prenuptial agreement indicates that Kardashian may be unwilling to ignore his dalliances. If it is proven that Odom committed adultry and the couple divorces, Kardashian retains the Tarzana mansion the couple share, $500,000 for every year they were married, two vehicles, shopping money and spousal support. However, many reports continue that infidelity is not the problem in the marriage, but Odom’s continued use of drugs. Odom checked into a San Diego rehab in 2012, but left after only three weeks, and insiders claim that Odom’s recent disappearance was related to an intervention, staged by Kardashian, to encourage him to return to rehab.

Regardless of whether the marriage ends due to infidelity or drug use, it appears that addiction may be a costly proposition for Odom due to the clause in his prenuptial agreement.

Repair Plans, Appliances, and Rancid Meat…Oh, My!

Finance, Life

: Image via Wikipedia

We recently had our annual barbecue. (For the purists, I am Minnesotan. Barbecue means “cooked over fire”.) Due to massive scheduling conflicts, it was a bit smaller than normal; only about 20 people came. At least 10 other people RSVP-ed that they were going to make it, but didn’t. Grr.

Naturally, we had food for everyone said they would be there and enough for half of the people who didn’t say anything, since Minnesotans don’t RSVP well. That translates to a lot of leftovers. No problem. After all, leftover ribs are hardly a punishment.

Sunday morning, we woke up to find that our refrigerator was happier at room temperature than the standard “cold”. We didn’t know it at the time, but the defrost unit was borked, so the cold air couldn’t circulate from the freezer to the refrigerator. Bye-bye leftovers. Hello, Mr. Repairman. We needed an excuse to clean out the fridge, anyway, but not at the price of my beautifully seared meat! (Sadness strikes.)

Monday evening, the repairman came out, worked for 2 hours and left a functional refrigerator and a $240 invoice in his wake. Thankfully, we are on the appliance repair plan through the gas company. We pay $26.40 per month to cover repairs to our range, water heater, furnace, drier, sewer main, and refrigerator. The first four items are standard, the final two are options that cost extra.

We originally got on the plan for the sewer main. We had a tree whose roots grew into the main and clogged it every year. A backed-up sewer main is a crappy way to wake up. Getting that snaked to the street cost $200 per year. At the time, without the refrigerator, the plan cost about $12 per month. One $200 call-out more than paid for the plan for the year. That was easy math. Now, our 20 year old refrigerator has been repaired twice in the last year, giving us $500 worth of repairs for $316.80. I would like to take this time to thank all of the people with reliable appliances for subsidizing my repairs.

My furnace, drier, and range are all reasonably new and shouldn’t need repairs any time soon, but the refrigerator and sewer main have paid for the plan themselves, several times over.

Should you get a similar plan? If your covered appliances are more than 4-5 years old, I would consider it. If they are more than 10 years old, I wouldn’t hesitate at all. Repairing quality appliances is cheaper than replacing them, especially when the repair cost is paid monthly and subsidized.

Do you use a service plan?

The High Cost of Keeping Richard Ramirez in Prison

News

Serial killers in the United States often gain cult status due to their strange courtroom antics and dramatic personalities. Recently deceased death row inmate Richard Ramirez was definitely one of the most famous serial killers of all time before he passed away of liver failure in California’s San Quentin State Prison.

After a dramatic arrest in 1985 in East Los Angeles by residents who recognized Ramirez from photographs displayed all over the news, Ramirez would sit in jail for years while awaiting a trial that finally began in 1989. There would be no more expensive trial in the history of Los Angeles County except for the O.J. Simpson trial that occurred a few years later.

At a cost of $1.8 million dollars, Los Angelinos would pay dearly for the privilege of trying Ramirez in a court of law. Incredibly, however, this massive sum wasn’t the only cost associated with this vicious serial killer. Because he was sentenced to death and due to the incredibly long appeals process associated with death row inmates, Ramirez sat in jail for over two decades without any fear of actually being put to death by the state of California.

Over the past hundred years, the number of individuals incarcerated in the United States has ballooned from a few hundred thousand people to almost 2.5 million prisoners. The most expensive people to incarcerate are death row inmates, who sit in a type of solitary confinement for decades. A moratorium on future executions in California has ensured that inmates like Ramirez have been costing taxpayers millions of dollars for housing and appeals with no likelihood of being put to death.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, there are around 700 people sitting on death row in California, which require a massive investment of tax dollars. The state’s ongoing budget crisis and inability to balance its budget has put great strain on the prison system to house so many death row inmates at such an incredible cost.

Richard Ramirez’s untimely death at the age of 53 and his decades-long residency within a state prison brings to light a disturbing fact: more inmates die of natural causes while on death row than are actually put to death. Whether support for the death penalty exists or not, the billions of dollars spent by the state to keep inmates on death row has resulted in just 13 executions since the late 1970s.

A study in 2011 that was conducted by a judge and professor in the state suggested that California has spent over $4 billion since the death penalty was reinstituted. Out of those funds spent, at least a billion dollars was used for housing and incarceration of the inmates, including serial killers like Richard Ramirez.

A further study presented by the Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice in 2008 suggested that keeping the system intact with inmates on death row would cost around $137 million dollars a year. On the other hand, if California was to commute those death sentences to life in prison and abolish the death penalty, the yearly cost would drop to $11.5 million a year.

Offering the families of victims of death penalty-worthy crimes the chance to see a killer or other criminal experience the ultimate punishment may offer some sort of closure. Unfortunately, with the expectation that individuals on death row are more likely to die of natural causes than be put to death in California, the implementation of the death penalty in the state must be reexamined.

Breaking Bad: The Economics of Meth

Business

Breaking Bad's Walter White (Bryan Cranston) J... — Breaking Bad’s Walter White (Bryan Cranston) Jack O’ Lantern (Photo credit: edwaado)

In AMC’s “Breaking Bad,” Walter White plays the role of chemistry teacher turned meth producer and drug kingpin. While it certainly makes for good television to think about the profits available to someone willing to trade in illegal drugs, the mountain of money that Walter makes by the end of the series is actually not that unrealistic. Meth has a street value that approaches $30,000 dollars per pound. Not only that, but Walter displays a deceptively keen business acumen, especially for a chemistry teacher. A number of keen decisions allowed Walter White to become as successful as he has.

Production Costs

As any business owner knows, merchandise costs are a major portion of any operating budget. Mr. White keeps his profit margins robust in a number of ways. The first of these is by managing his production costs. When he started out in the business, Walter simply stole the majority of the required chemicals from the high school where he worked. This allowed for the product to be sold at a substantial profit when compared to producers who are required to invest more upfront.

Location, Location, Location

On top of his discounted production, Walter was able to stay ahead of the competition both literally and figuratively by utilizing his RV for production. Typically, meth is produced in a laboratory environment, which requires a building. This adds an additional cost of rent to the typical business profile. Walter, on the other hand, produced out of his RV in the early stages of his business’ growth, further increasing his profit margin.

Distribution

On the production side of the economy, a major consideration is distribution costs. While most of Walter’s competition used pricey, established lines of distribution for their products, he cut out the middle man by distributing his product with his team. This caused major disruptions to his business when his competitors tried to kill him. However, while he was able to accomplish this model, Walter was the beneficiary of increased profits. Then, when he killed his competition, he was able to return to the healthy margin he enjoyed previously.

Advertising

Many new products are launched with a full blown media campaign. This is a costly proposition. Walter, instead, relied on the quality of his product to speak for itself. This competitive advantage reduced the need for an extensive advertising budget. Furthermore, after a period of time, his product became a preferred choice by consumers everywhere. While he was required to distribute a few loss leaders at times, Walter kept the advertising costs down and profited greatly.

So, while it may seem like Walter White was simply a chemistry teacher who got lucky, it’s clear that he actually had a specific plan for his upstart business. By following a few standard economic principles, he was able to increase his margins at the crucial beginning phase of his business, and had established himself as a leader in the market when he chose to expand

Investing Basics

Finance

If you’ve got your debt paid off, or at least paid down enough to start thinking about using your money for the future instead of the past, it’s time to consider investing your money. If you invest your money, it can grow and start building wealth for you, preferably without your active intervention. Passive income is the best income.

Before you invest in anything, you need to understand the investment completely. In the words of Dave Ramsey, you need to own the investment. There are some questions to ask to get to that level of understanding.

What kind of return can you expect? Will the income come from renters, dividends, or interest? Is the income reliable?

How risky is the investment? Generally, more risk comes with the potential for more income, but that is merely potential. It’s called risk for a reason. If your renters leave, can you make the payments on the property? Will you be financially devastated if the investment tanks? Companies like Standard & Poor’s rate the risk of corporate and municipal bonds.

How liquid is it? How hard will it be to get your money out of the investment? Stocks and bonds can usually be sold at will, but CDs and IRAs almost always come with restrictions. Property requires a seller before you can get your money back out.

Is there a tax advantage? Some investments, like U.S. Savings bonds and municipal bonds, are exempt from varying levels of taxes. Others, such as some IRAs, allow your wealth to grow tax-deferred and can, in some cases, be withdrawn tax-free. Other investments, like a 401k paid out of pre-tax income, can lower your taxable income and actually increase your take-home pay while building your retirement fund. Do you understand the 401k alternatives?

When you are looking at an investment vehicle, make sure it is legitimate. Don’t believe get-rich-quick promises and always back away from high-pressure sales tactics. Always take the time to investigate your investments.

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