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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.

What I’ve been up to….

Business

Posting has been scarce lately.

But there’s a reason.

This morning, I released a bit of software for sale and I’ve got more coming in the next couple of weeks.

What does the software do?

It’s a WordPress plugin that let’s you bulk upload & schedule Word documents as posts. You can upload 50 Word docs and get 50 posts scheduled to run once a week. It takes about 10 minutes to make that happen. It handles the category, author, and posting time for you.

Why?

I build niche sites. When I do, I usually hire out most of the writing. It’s a pain in the butt to get handed 50 or a 100 articles to convert, post, and schedule. So I solved that problem.

It’s called Word Poster. You can get the details here. I figure that this thing saves me at least an hour of work for every 10 articles I buy.

At $27, that pays for itself in an hour or two.

Get Age on your Side

Misc

One of the best ways in the early years of your career to provide for your long term future is to have a 401K for your retirement where your employer will match your own contributions up to a certain figure. Your contribution is pre-tax incidentally. Albert Einstein once said that compound interest was the ‘eighth wonder of the world’ and it is compound interest that will help even small amounts to grow into a substantial figure on retirement if savings begin in your 20s.

It is worth illustrating this with real figures. A figure of $4,000 a year saved between the ages of 25 and 35 with no further contributions after that will produce a larger final figure at 65 than someone starting at 35 and contributing $4,000 per annum for 30 years. The latter has invested three times as much as well. The factors that decide this are time and compound interest. The whole total of former is working for him or her for 30 years. A fair amount of the second example is only ‘working’ positively for a limited time. Start early!

An Illustration

It is worth looking at examples to see what size of fund is realistic. 8% is not an unreasonable sum to put away on a salary of $40,000 a year, a salary that grows at 2% per annum for 20 years. If the employer pays 3% in addition and growth is a modest 7%, the fund at the end of 20 years would be around $210,000. If you can put 10% in instead, or if you extend the saving period to 30 years the fund rockets to over $500,000! It’s time and compound interest again because in the example over 20 years you will have only put in just under $80,000 yourself to have a fund two and a half times bigger.

A Couple of Observations

Can there be a bigger argument for saving from an early age than that? Surely not! The question is how to manage your money well enough so that you can start to save in the early years of your career. You may well have a student loan to begin to pay off. Probably two of the most important things to do with realisticloans.com, or not to do depending how you look at it are:

Credit Cards. Avoid building up debts by buying things you cannot afford. The interest charged on outstanding balances is penal. If you have a balance, perhaps as a legacy of subsidizing your student life, take out a personal loan to clear it. It is much cheaper in terms of interest rate and repayable in monthly instalments over a fixed term
Resist the temptation of trying to impress with material things. Impress people by who you are and not a new car or the latest fashions.

Expenditure

There is no doubt that you may well have monthly expenditure you did not face before, especially if you have relocated to start work. Such expenditure is unavoidable but you should spend some time on researching whether you are getting the best deals. That applies to a number of significant things such as utilities, insurance and telephone. There are comparison websites that do a good deal of research for you and at least will provide you with a short list to look at further.

The aim is to create a regular surplus that can be transferred out of your checking account when your monthly pay comes in to work positively for you and your future. You will need to apply self-discipline to your finances but you can see from the example of ‘time and compound interest’ what they benefits are for being in control. It really is not much to sacrifice.

There will be times in the years to come when you have big financial decisions to make. Real estate comes to mind immediately and a long term mortgage can reasonably be regarded as positive debt because it should produce good growth over the term you have committed yourself to. With real estate often comes marriage and a family; and all the expense that involves. Yet that responsibility is yet another reason to start young in saving for the future, and your possible dependents.

20 Happy Thoughts

Business, Finance, Life, Misc

Since I’ve been on a bit of a death theme lately, I thought I post something purely happy.

Here it is. In no particular order, twenty unequivocated things that make me happy.

My three year old has the most beautiful blue/silver/gray eyes I have ever seen.
In the past 32 months, I’ve reduced my total debt load by $42,859.70. That’s an average reduction of $1,339.37 per month.
My insane work schedule is paying off. I’m more than halfway to making my day job’s income redundant.
My preteen son is currently showing none of the signs of the horrible rebellion that I put my parents through.
The world hasn’t imploded, exploded, or tilted its axis recently.
My parents did a good job of raising me.
I haven’t touched my overdraft line of credit in more than 2 years.
My wife loves me.
I love her.
Wrestling season starts tomorrow, and Punk ended last season with real promise.
I’ve dropped 12 pounds in the last 16 days.
Bacon is good.
Daughter #1 is starting kindergarten in September and excited about it.
Our cars are paid off.
This site helps me stay motivated to eliminate my debt.
You rock.
I may get out of debt just before the world ends.
The Yakezie Network has helped get this blog to where it is. If you’ve got a finance blog, join today. You won’t regret it.
FINCON 2012 is is Denver and I won’t be napping on my motorcycle on the way there, like I did the last time I went to Denver. It’s not something I recommend, but it makes a neat story.
I have 20 things to be happy about. That’s a recursive happy-maker right there.

Sunday Roundup: Diet Redux

Misc

I had total diet fail last month.

From April to May, across 4 consecutive weekends, I put a bit over 1500 miles on my car on 4 separate trips. That is something like 10 times my average mileage.

That’s a lot of driving, squeezed around a regular schedule of work. Have you ever tried a drive through for low-carb food? Because of that, and the circumstances of some of my trips, I abandoned my diet on those weekends. Funeral food is rarely low-carb.

By the time those trips were over, I had spent so much time off my diet that “What’s one more sandwich?” became an easy justification. There is a reason I don’t break the rules I give myself. I can’t seem to cheat just once. Once I cross that line, it’s over.

So, instead of cheating on my diet and feeling guilty, I officially dropped it for most of the month of May. I decided it would be easier to get it out of my system than to continue worrying about it.

May’s over, and I’m back on the Slow Carb diet. My little fail cost me 7 pounds and 6.5 total inches(waist , hips, biceps, and thighs). I’m reasonably sure that most of that is water and will evaporate before next weekend.

Best Posts

My goal is to live my life so that I have no regrets at the end of it. That means pursuing my dreams and doing the things I love.

It’s easier to do the things I love when my life isn’t weighed down by the crap I don’t need.

Sweating the Big Stuff wrote a killer post on saving money simply by asking. Often, the easy things work.

Carnivals I’ve Rocked and Guest Posts I’ve Rolled

Shopping Online: The Money-Saving Secret was included in the Festival of Frugality.

Money Problems: Paying Off Debt was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.

5 Ways to Help Your Friends Stay Out of Debt was included in the Totally Money Blog Carnival.

Should Pupils Focus on Personal Finance was included in the Yakezie Carnival.

Thank you! If I missed anyone, please let me know.

Get More Out of Live Real, Now

There are so many ways you can read and interact with this site.

You can subscribe by RSS and get the posts in your favorite news reader. I prefer Google Reader.

You can subscribe by email and get, not only the posts delivered to your inbox, but occasional giveaways and tidbits not available elsewhere.

You can ‘Like’ LRN on Facebook. Facebook gets more use than Google. It can’t hurt to see what you want where you want.

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You can send me an email, telling me what you liked, what you didn’t like, or what you’d like to see more(or less) of. I promise to reply to any email that isn’t purely spam.

Have a great week!

Net Worth Update

Misc

Now that my taxes are done and paid for, I thought it would be nice to update my net worth.

In January, I had:

Assets

House: $252,900
Cars: $20,789
Checking accounts: $3,220
Savings accounts: $6,254
CDs: $1,105
IRAs: $12,001
Investment Accounts: $1,155
Total: $297,424

Liabilities

Mortgage: $29,982
Credit card: $18,725
Total: $48,707

Overall: $249,717.00

Here is my current status:

Assets

House: $240,100 (-12,800) Estimated market value according to the county tax assessor. This will be going down in a few months when the estimates are finalized for the year. I don’t care much about this number. We’re not moving any time soon, so the lower the value, the lower the tax assessment.
Cars: $15,857 (-4,932) Kelly Blue Book suggested retail value for both of our vehicles and my motorcycle.
Checking accounts: $4,817 (+1,597) I have accounts spread across three banks. I don’t keep much operating cash here, so this fluctuates based on how far away my next paycheck is.
Savings accounts: $6,418 (+164) I have savings accounts spread across a few banks. This does not include my kids’ accounts, even though they are in my name. This includes every savings goal I have at the moment. I swept a chunk of this into an IRA to lower my tax bill, which is also why my IRA balance is up as much as it is.
CDs: $1,107 (+2) I consider this a part of my emergency fund.
IRAs: $16,398 (+4,397) I have finally started to contribute automatically. It’s only $200 at the moment, but it’s something.
Investment Accounts: $308 (-847) I pulled most of this out and threw it at a credit card.
Total: $285,005 (-12,419)

Liabilities

Mortgage: $28,162 (-1,820)
Credit card: $16,038 (-2,687) This is the current target of my debt snowball. This has actually grown a bit over the last week. I did a balance transfer that cost $400, but it gives me 0% for a year, versus the 9% I was paying. That will pay for itself in 3 months, while simplifying my payments a bit and saving me almost a thousand dollars in payments this year.
Total: $44,200 (-4,507)

Overall: $240,805 (-8,912)

Well, I lost some net worth over the last quarter, but it’s still a good report. If I disregard the change in value of my house and cars–two thing I have no control over–my overall total would have gone up almost $9,000.

All in all, it’s been a good year for me, so far, though paying off that credit card by fall is going to be a challenge.