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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.

Family Bed: How to Make It Stop

Parenting

For years, my kids shared my bed.

When my oldest was a baby, I was working a graveyard shift, so my wife was alone with the baby at night. It was easy to keep a couple of bottles in a cooler by the bed and not have to get out of bed to take care of him when he woke up once an hour to drink a full bottle.

Then he got older. And bigger. And bigger.

We tried to move him to his own bed a few times, but it never worked well. He’d scream if we put him in a crib, so we got him a bed at 9 months old. That just meant he was free to join us whenever he woke up. Brat.

We finally got him to voluntarily move to his own bed after his sister was born. Shortly after she was born, I woke up to see him using her as a pillow. To paint the proper picture, this kid is 5’9″ and wears size 12 shoes. At 11. When I woke him up to tell him what he was doing, he decided to sleep in his own bed.

Method #1 to get your kids in their own bed: Have kid 1 try to crush kid 2 and feel bad about it.

Method #1 isn’t a great solution.

Soon, baby #3 showed up and we had 2 monsters in bed with us again. Once they started getting bigger, it became difficult for the 4 of us to sleep. We tried to get them into their own beds. Unfortunately, even as toddlers, my kids had a stubborn streak almost as big as my own. Nothing worked.

Eventually, they got big enough that I was crowded right out of the bed. At least we had a comfortable couch.

Sleeping on a couch gets old.

When the girls got old enough to reason with, we had a choice: We either had to find a way to convince them they wanted to sleep in their own room, or we had to have a fourth brat for them to attempt to crush at night.

We went with bribery. Outright, blatant bribery.

We put a chart on the wall with each of their names and 7 boxes. Every night they slept in their own beds, they got to check a box. When all of the boxes were checked, they got $5 and a trip to the toy store.

It took 10 days to empty our bed and it’s been peaceful sleeping since. That’s $5 well-spent.

Have you done a family bed? How did it work? How long did it last?

Make Extra Money: A Niche Site Walkthrough

Make Extra Money Part 1: Introduction

Right now, I have 7 sites promoting specific products, or “niche” sites. When those products are bought through my sites, I get a commission, ranging from 40-75%. Of those sites, 5 make money, 1 is newly finished, and 1 is not quite complete. I’m not going to pretend I’m making retirement-level money on these sites, but I am making enough money to make it worthwhile.

Make Extra Money Part 2: Niche Selection

These 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”.

Making Extra Money Part 3: Product Selection

My niches site are all product-promotion sites. I pick a product–generally an e-book or video course–and set up a site dedicated to it. Naturally, picking a good product is an important part of the equation.

Make Extra Money Part 4: Keyword Research

If you aren’t targeting search terms that people use, you are wasting your time. If you are targeting terms that everybody else is targeting, it will take forever to get to the top of the search results. Spend the extra time now to do proper keyword research. It will save you a ton of time and hassle later. This is time well-spent.

Make Extra Money, Part 5: Domains and Hosting

In this installment, I show you how to pick a domain name and a website host.

Make Extra Money, Part 6: Setting Up a Site

A niche site doesn’t amount to much without, well, a site. In this installment, I show you how I configure a site, from start to finish.

Make Extra Money, Part 6.5: Why I Do It The Way I Do It

Several people have asked me to explain why I use the plugins and settings I use. This explains the “Why” behind Part 6.

More to come….

The Unfrugal Meal

Finance, Parenting

I spend a lot of time talking about how to save money here. It’s kind of what I do.

Not today.

Today, I’m going to talk about the best way I’ve wasted money during my vacation this week.

First, so my feelings are completely understood: A vacation is about experiences and memories. I could spend all day at the park with my kids, or I could spend a memorable meal with them. Which will they remember longer?

It ain’t the park. They are there almost every day.

Of course, if the restaurant is McDonald’s they wouldn’t remember for long, either.

Tuesday, after a long day of hands-on, interactive museum-going, we took the kids to a Japanese steakhouse. Teppanyaki, where they cook the food at the table, complete with fire, spatula spinning, and airborne food.

I’m the only one in my family who has seen that before. Honestly, watching the art, the skill, the banter, and the giant fireball leaves me as wide-eyed as my kids.

They loved it.

Watching the chef throw a bowl full of rice across the table made my son’s jaw drop.

Seeing the chef carry fire from one side of the grill to the other on his fingers made my youngest squeal and beg for more fire tricks.

Getting squirted by the chef when he was putting out a flare-up made the middle brat giggle, possibly because the squirt gun was a little kid, dressed up as a fireman, with his pants down. She got “peed” on and loved it.

Aside from cooking-as-a-show, the service was fantastic. There was always a waiter nearby to keep our water glasses full or to provide “little kid” chopsticks, which are modified with rubber band to remove the need for skill to eat. They had the courses perfectly timed. The minute the salad was cleared, the soup was delivered. When that was done, the chef rolled up to start on the rice. My two-year-old was eating white rice without complaint for the first time.

Giggles and squeals. Three days later, they are still talking about it. My 11-year-old, who’s trying so hard to be an unimpressible teenager, says it was the coolest restaurant he’s ever seen.

Frugal, it wasn’t, but the memories were worth the money.

The Virtues of Preparation

Life, Parenting

Rainbow striped toe socks worn with thong sandals — Image via Wikipedia

The first day of school caught me by surprise yesterday.

I knew it was coming, and we had almost all of the stuff we need in the brat’s backpack, but we weren’t ready for it.

Yesterday morning, we woke up. Brat #3 was uncooperative, to say the least, so I wasn’t playing my ‘A’ game. I woke up Brat #1 and sent him on his way to get changed and eat breakfast. Ten minutes later, I chased him off of the couch to go get changed and eat breakfast. He had forgotten that his school day starts at 7:30, now.

He ate and grabbed his backpack to leave. I sent him to his room to change.

He changed and grabbed his backpack to leave. I sent him to his room for socks.

He put on socks and grabbed his backpack to leave. Then he realized his shoes weren’t by the door.

Shoe hunt!

I got him out of the door, only to see his face again a minute later when he realized he had forgotten something else.

Please remember that Brat #3 was acting up the entire time.

During the course of this, I was trying to make my lunch, which spent the day sitting on my kitchen counter. I was dressing myself; I don’t know how many times I made it to the front door, only to realize I hadn’t put on socks, yet. Or pants, for that matter.

What could have gone better?

Preparation.

On Monday, the day we all had off, with no plans, we should have set our alarms and done a dry run, right up to the point of walking out of the door. Here’s how Monday should have gone:

All the school and daycare stuff should have been ready to go the night before.
I get up, have breakfast, then wake Brat #1.
He gets up and has breakfast, while I dress Brats #2 & 3.
Brat #1 gets dressed while I help the girls with their shoes and jackets.
Brat #1 throws on shoes and heads out the door while I strap the girls into the car.
Everybody’s happy.

That’s the well-oiled machine I would like to see in the morning. Am I dreaming? How do you handle your morning routine efficiently?

Crying is for Winners

Finance

Have you ever seen a kid come off a wrestling mat, crying his eyes out because he lost?

Wrestling Sideways - Really (Photo credit: Creativity+ Timothy K Hamilton)

Often, that kid will get told to be tough and stop crying.

That’s wrong.

I’m not opposed to teaching kids not to cry under most circumstances, but just after an intense competition, I love it. It’s the best possible sign that the kids was pouring his soul into winning. It means he was trying with everything he had.

It means he is–or will be–a winner.

When a kid, particularly a boy in a tough sport, is crying, you know he’s going to try harder and do better next time.

For all of the “tough guy” ability it takes to succeed as a wrestler, I’ve never seen another wrestler teasing the crier. They’ve all been there. Wrestling is a team sport, but you win or lose a match on your own. When you step out in front of hundreds of people and spend 3 to 6 minutes giving every ounce of everything you have to give, only to find it’s not good enough, you’ll often find you don’t have the final reserve necessary to control your emotions.

This is different than a kid crying because he lost a game, just because he lost. Some kids feel entitled to win anything they do, regardless of the effort they put it. That’s also wrong.

Crying at a loss is okay after putting in maximum effort and full energy, not because the dice went the wrong way.

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