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.
This weekend, my wife is off scrapbooking with my mother and sister-in-law. Instead of hanging around the house trying to keep three kids entertained, I’m at my brother’s house, since his wife abandoned him with their kids, too. I’ll let his kids keep mine entertained, and vice versa. Woo!
30 Day Project Update
I am on the Slow Carb Diet. At the end of the month, I’ll see what the results were and decide if it’s worth continuing. For those who don’t know, the Slow Carb Diet involves cutting out potatoes, rice, flour, sugar, and dairy in all their forms. My meals consist of 40% proteins, 30% vegetables, and 30% legumes(beans or lentils). There is no calorie counting, just some specific rules, accompanied by a timed supplement regimen and some timed exercises to manipulate my metabolism. The supplements are NOT effedrin-based diet pills, or, in fact, uppers of any kind. There is also a weekly cheat day, to cut the impulse to cheat and to avoid letting my body go into famine mode.
I’m measuring two metrics, my weight and the total inches of my waist , hips, biceps, and thighs. Between the two, I should have an accurate assessment of my progress.
Weight: I have lost 30 pounds since January 2nd! That’s only 1 pounds since last week. 12 more to meet my goal for February. The difference this week? I’ve cut back on the supplements, to see if they actually make a difference. It would appear they do.
Total Inches: I have lost 16 inches in the same time frame, down 1.5 since last week.
This is where I review the posts I wrote a year ago. Did you miss them then?
This was Scam Week last year. I had a post on debt scams and scams that target disaster victims. As we roll into flooding season, it’s important to know how these scams work.
I also discussed my attempt to teach my son to savor delayed gratification. It has been working. He makes long-term(for an 11 year old) plans regularly.
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.
Did you know that having a bad credit history could cost you your job? An increasing number of American employers have turned to running credit checks to screen job
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
applicants. Some companies even evaluate existing employees on a regular basis by checking their credit reports. If you have outstanding debts, you might consider getting one of those credit cards for bad credit to clean up your report before you apply for your dream job.
Not all companies run your credit history when you apply for a position. However, if you’re applying for a job that entails working with money or valuables, it’s a safe bet that they’ll be checking your credit history. Financial institutions, brokerage companies and jewelry manufacturers all run credit checks, as do hotels, accounting firms, human resource departments and government agencies.
Companies run credit checks because they want to hire employees who won’t be tempted to embezzle company funds to pay off large debts. Some companies fear that employees who carry large debt loads are susceptible to blackmail or bribery. The federal government carries this concern even further, indicating that citizens who owe large debts are considered national security risks.
Many companies feel that your credit report gives them a sneak peak at your true character. Having a good credit history indicates that you are a responsible person with excellent character. Having a bad credit history means that you are an unreliable person of poor character. True or not and fairly or not, this is the current belief running throughout company hiring departments.
Unfortunately, you can’t relax about your credit report even after you’ve been hired for a position. Once you’ve given a company written permission to check your credit report, they can recheck it at a later date. Government and financial organizations often run periodic credit checks on all of their employees. Some companies only recheck your credit history if you are up for a promotion. It’s a good idea, therefore, to keep your credit history squeaky clean.
Keep in mind that having a couple of late payments probably won’t kill your chances of employment or promotion. Most employers look for the really big issues, such as high credit card balances, defaulted student loans, repossessions and foreclosures. Some companies also look for charge-offs and consistent late payments as well.
Steps You Can Take
Financial experts suggest checking your credit report before you start your job search. Read your credit report carefully and make sure that all of the information is accurate. If your report contains incorrect details or any unauthorized charges, dispute these errors immediately and have them corrected to raise your credit score.
If you have a host of unpaid bills, find a way to settle those debts to improve your credit history before applying for jobs. Many people turn to credit cards for bad credit consumers. These cards allow you to consolidate all of your debts into a single debt. Just don’t forget to make the payments on this card.
Be upfront with potential employers about any negative marks on your credit history. Just tell them that you have had past issues with your credit and are now working to clear up all of your debt. There’s no need to go into explicit detail.
Once you have a job, be sure that you check your credit report at least every six months to ensure it contains only correct information. Pay all of your creditors on time. Never take out any new lines of credit unless you are absolutely positive that you can pay it back in a timely manner.
If you want to make money, help someone get healthy, wealthy or laid.
This section was quick.
Seriously, those three topics have been making people rich since the invention of rich. Knowing that isn’t enough. If you want to make some money in the health niche, are you going to help people lose weight, add muscle, relieve stress, or reduce the symptoms of some unpleasant medical condition? Those are called “sub-niches”. (Side question: Viagra is a sub-niche of which topic?)
Still not enough.
If you’re going to offer a product to help lose weight, does it revolve around diet, exercise, or both? For medical conditions, is it a way to soothe eczema, instructions for a diabetic diet, a cure for boils, or help with acne? Those are micro-niches.
That’s where you want to be. The “make money” niche is far too broad for anyone to effectively compete. The “make money online” sub-niche is still crazy. When you get to the “make money buying and selling websites” micro-niche, you’re in a territory that leaves room for competition, without costing thousands of dollars to get involved.
Remember that: The more narrowly you define your niche market, the easier it is to compete. You can take that too far. The “lose weight by eating nothing but onions, alfalfa, and imitation caramel sauce” micro-niche is probably too narrowly defined to have a market worth pursuing. You need a micro-niche with buyers, preferably a lot of them.
Now the hard part.
How do you find a niche with a lot of potential customers? Big companies pay millions of dollars every year to do that kind of market research.
Naturally, I recommend you spend millions of dollars on market research.
No?
Here’s the part where I make this entire series worth every penny you’ve paid. Times 10.
Steal the research.
My favorite source of niche market research to steal is http://www.dummies.com/. Click the link and notice all of the wonderful niches at the top of the page. Jon Wiley & Sons, Inc. spends millions of dollars to know what topics will be good sellers. They’ve been doing this a long time. Trust their work.
Click for full-size image
You don’t have to concentrate on the topics I’ve helpfully highlighted, but they will make it easier for you. Other niches can be profitable, too.
Golf is a great example. Golfers spend money to play the game. You don’t become a golfer without having some discretionary money to spend on it. I’d recommend against consumer electronics. There is a lot of competition for anything popular, and most of that is available for free. If you choose to promote some high-end gear using your Amazon affiliate link, you’re still only looking at a 3% commission.
I like to stick to topics that people “need” an answer for, and can find that answer in ebook form, since I will be promoting a specific product.
With that in mind, pick a topic, then click one of the links to the actual titles for sale. The “best selling titles” links are a gold mine. You can jump straight to the dummies store, if you’d like.
Of the topics above, here’s how I would narrow it down:
1. Business and Careers. The bestsellers here are Quickbooks and home buying. I’m not interested in either topic, so I’ll go into “More titles”. Here, the “urgent” niches look like job hunting and dealing with horrible coworkers. I’m also going to throw “writing copy” into the list because it’s something I have a hard time with.
Bestsellers
2. Health and Fitness. My first thought was to do a site on diabetic cooking, but the cooking niche is too competitive. Childhood obesity, detox diets and back pain remedies strike me as worth pursuing. I’m leaning towards back pain, because I have a bad back. When you’ve thrown your back out, you’ve got nothing to do but lie on the couch and look for ways to make the pain stop. That’s urgency.
3. Personal Finance. The topics that look like good bets are foreclosures and bankruptcies. These are topics that can cost thousands of dollars if you get them wrong. I hate to promote a bankruptcy, but some people are out of choices. Foreclosure defense seems like a good choice. Losing your home comes with a sense of urgency, and helping people stay in their home makes me feel good.
4. Relationships and Family. Of these topics, divorce is probably a good seller. Dating advice definitely is. I’m not going to detail either one of those niches here. Divorce is depressing and sex, while fun, isn’t a topic I’m going to get into here. I try to be family friendly, most of the time. Weddings are great topic. Brides are planning to spend money and there’s no shortage of resources to promote.
So, the niches I’ve chosen are:
Back pain
Bankruptcy
Conflict resolution at work
Detox diets
Fat kids
Foreclosure avoidance
Job hunting
Weddings
Writing copy
I won’t be building 9 niche sites in this series. From here, I’m going to explore effective keywords/search terms and good products to support. There’s no guarantee I’ll find a good product with an affiliate program for a niche I’ve chosen that has keywords that are both highly searched and low competition, so I’m giving myself alternatives.
For those of you following along at home, take some time to find 5-10 niches you’d be willing to promote.
The important things to consider are:
1. Does it make me feel dirty to promote it?
2. Will there be customers willing to spend money on it?
3. Will those customers have an urgent need to solve a problem?
I’ve built sites that ignore #3, and they don’t perform nearly as well as those that consider it. When I do niche sites, I promote a specific product. It’s pure affiliate marketing, so customers willing to spend money are necessarily my target audience.
I spent most of last week at the Financial Blogger Conference, or FINCON.
First, since this is a personal finance blog, here is what it cost:
Hotel: $695.75 – I paid $119 per night, plus taxes and fees. The travel rewards on my credit card will be making this go away.
Airfare: $211.80 – I bought early and live next to a Delta hub airport. This will also be getting erased by my credit card rewards.
Ticket: $175.84 – I got a $25 discount for being a repeat attendee and I paid an extra $99 for the Bootcamp extension, which was 2 extra days that–alone–made the whole trip worthwhile.
Food: $203.53 – This includes a $90 splurge meal at Ruth’s Chris, which I was looking forward to for months before the conference.
Other – $113 – I brought $183 in cash with me. This was used for some meals not included above, cab fare, and tips for bartenders, housekeeping, and the concierge. I always tip a bartender, even if it’s an open bar. It guarantees fast service and full-strength drinks all night.
Total cost: $1399.92
Total after credit card reimbursement: $492.37
Now for the important part: Was it worth it?
Yes.
The Bootcamp was a fantastic time to meet–and actually get to know–other bloggers. There were only 50 of us, instead of 500 at the main event, so we were able to break into small groups and brainstorm useful projects and activities. I learned more about podcasting than I ever had before and I got a chance to share some of what I know about SEO and managing virtual assistants. In the larger sessions, questions are rushed and people are shy.
I got to beat up on my comfort zones.
I presented some awards with Crystal at the Plutus Awards ceremony, which means cracking jokes about Canadians in front of 500 people who don’t know me. I regularly stand and teach 30-50 people, but that’s always a warm crowd on a topic I know extremely well. This was new for me.
I sang anatomically explicit songs to strangers during the Bootcamp karaoke night. Selections were from Monty Python, DaVinci’s Notebook, and Denis Leary.
I was on a panel, by surprise. I was asked to be available if I were needed for questions, then got dragged to the front of the room for the entire session. I would do that again.
That’s 3 things that were all well outside of my comfort zone, but I’m happy I did them. I don’t believe in not doing something simply because I’m afraid to do it.
Random gatherings are fun.
From people stopping by our staked-out territory in the lobby, to a surprise game of Cards Against Humanity in the lobby bar with Joe and Len to having a discussion about the meaning of “No” when you’ve got a pre-determined safeword, it was a good week.
The last 5 days were easily the most extroverted days I’ve ever had. Since I didn’t force myself into any large groups for long periods of time, I never felt drained like I often do in similar situations. It’s good to find a balance that let’s me meet and connect with other without exhausting myself. I am seriously an off-the-charts introvert, even if I’m not even a little bit shy.
FINCON was totally worth it. I was excited to go, and I’m excited to start acting on what I’ve learned, including being a part of a new mastermind group, with the awesomest lounge lizards in the PF world.
My wife and I started dating when we were 19. We married shortly thereafter, and–at 31–we have 3 kids.
Now, most of a decade into my career, with a dozen years of experience as both a husband and an adult, I think we make decent decisions.
When we were younger, though, we were dumb. We didn’t think much past the “year” in “0% for a year”. Our long-term financial planning was non-existent. Heck, most of the time, our short-term financial planning usually consisted of a call to the bank to see if we had enough money to buy whatever we wanted at the moment or rushing to the bank to deposit the change we found in the couch, hoping to beat the last check we wrote.
We were never able to judge ourselves based on how happy we were. It was always a matter of how we were doing in relation to someone else. A relative–a close relative–is 10 years older than we are. That means, naturally, that she had a 10-year headstart on us. We saw the nice house, the nice cars, and the nice furniture and couldn’t help but compare it to our situation. Their stuff was always shiny and new, while we were making repairs and ignoring rust.
That comparison always made responsible spending difficult. We watched one friend upgrade her house twice in 2-3 years, while driving nice cars. Why couldn’t we do that, too?
Bad logic.
In one year, we put an addition on our house, got married, bought a brand-new pickup, and spent 10 days on a ship in the Caribbean. We did that with a gross household income of about $40,000. Before that summer, we didn’t have a mortgage. Since that summer, we have had a car payment, a credit card payment, and a mortgage payment.
I can still smell the scorched plastic peeling off the sides of our well-used credit cards. That year was when we figured out how everyone else affords all of the nice stuff: they bury themselves in debt.
The debt was never a big deal to us. Yes, money was tight. We always had more month than money, but we also had $50,000 in available credit on the cards and a $5000 credit line serving as our overdraft protection. Since we never missed a payment, we thought we were doing well. After all, you don’t have to be able to afford the debt, as long as you can afford the payment, right?
After that, we started putting the nice truck to work hauling home new furniture. Who can go wrong with 0% for a year? Surely, I’d have a raise by the time that comes due.
The same time we paid off the truck, I got a raise. It was a good raise. There we were, a wallet full full of balance-laden credit cards, a mortgage that we could have done without, furniture we were still paying for years later, a freshly paid-for truck, and a small stack of new money. That meant, of course, that we could “afford” a new car that came with a payment that was–coincidentally–equal to the raise. No problem.
Six weeks later, I got laid off.
Two weeks into the layoff, we found out that we were no longer “trying” to have another baby, we were just waiting for 9 months.
I wish(wish!) that would have been a wake-up call, but that moment of clarity was still 18 months away. The driving obsession to get out of debt was another 18 months away. Unemployed and expecting brat #2, I still wasn’t ready to take a rational look at my finances. That, however is a story for another day. Today, is my day to share my biggest financial blunders, not my successes.
