Yep, just part of the rant.
The true beef is with John’s Used Cars but I Have to at least try this angle from the customer’s side.
When John gets pressure from both sides…something will get done.
And another sign of this thread’s subject ;
Customers buying way over their service budget .
last year a disgruntled former volunteer, at my better halfs job, put some kind of mixture into two of the employees gas tanks. he knew what he was doing, both cars were totaled, causing great financial and emotional harm to both women. if our car was in the lot that night, we may have also suffered.
putting added pressure on a victim seems unkind at best to me. especially since she had no agreement with you at all.
you ve always seemed nice to me. we all make mistakes, me more than most. these days I try to do better, and fix some of my past errors. the past two years I ve apologized to many people for mistakes I made . some going back to the eighties. they seem to appreciate it, even 30 yrs later
Easy credit appears to be a plague to our economy.
@VDCdriver
“Her statement about not having $900 for the needed repairs tells me that she doesn’t have a credit card, which would allow her to defer the payment for at least 30 days–or longer if she didn’t mind paying interest.”
Oh, she has credit cards alright but they’re all maxed out! Paying big bucks in revolving credit interest every month and not making any progress on the principal…
@TwinTurbo–Yes, that is another possibility!
Speaking as someone who uses only a very small fraction of his available credit, and who pays the bill in full each month, I do need to readjust my thinking to accommodate the reality that there are people who max out their cards and then pay…many times the original price of a purchase…by financing those purchases over the space of…years.
Thank God my father taught me the importance of thrift…
I am probably the only person on here who has never bought anything on credit in his life. I even turned it down on occasion when offered.
these days I probably would not qualify because my wages have been attached for medical bills a couple times. I had insurance too. they just weaseled out somehow.
I do regret not purchasing a house. my plan was always to put away enough cash to get one at auction, but I never managed it.
Yes, thank God I taught my father the importance of thrift. Still I had to keep after him.
@asemaster
That same lady is the same one who was probably crying the blues about her electricity being shut off for non-payment of her electric bill. I see it alot, you go to a house and the people have smokes, beer and a f-250 but can’t pay a 100 dollar electric bill, now some people have fell on hard times and those folks I have compassion for but many of them just live way above their means and have a nicer vehicle than I do sitting in their driveway, yet they cannot pay their basic utility bills.
Quite a few times I have seen family and friend say that they can not pay for the fix for their lemon and complain about it. A week or two later I see they bought or leased a much more fancy car that the monthly payment would equal the cost of fixing the previous beater. I just don’t get how people handle money, but apparently stretching yourself way beyond what you should is more common than we think.
wesw I was around 29 years old in 1981 and had never had credit. It was getting to the point where you needed a credit card to for example rent a car or U-Haul plus other things. If I could have obtained a credit card I would have used it like the one card (VISA) I have today which is pay the balance every Month. I had located a used car I wanted to purchase and negotiated a price of $2,400. I put down a $200 non refundable deposit for it to be held for 72 hours. I had a savings account with First Interstate Bank with a balance well over $12,000. I was more of a saver than a spender. I thought this car purchase could be a chance to establish credit. I went to my bank and asked a loan officer if my plan to establish credit was viable. My plan consisted of a $1,000 12 Month personal loan secured by cash in my account. The loan officer said that was a great idea. $1,000 would have to be transferred to an escrow account for a minimal fee of $30. Interest in 1981 was fairly high at 8.25% but since I was planning to pay off the loan in 6 Months I agreed. I was told by the loan officer I could sign for the loan when they opened at 9:00 AM. When I returned the next morning I was informed by the same loan officer that since I did not have established credit I needed a cosigner that did! What! catch-22? I said no thank you, went to a teller and requested 2 cashiers checks. 1 for $2,200, and one for $10,XXX. The teller informed me that if I did not leave at least $5 in my account they would be forced to close it. I replied “that is exactly what I am doing”. This produced the bank manager who wanted to know why. I explained and he explained that it was unfortunately corporate policy. By the way. I didn’t mention that shortly after I was born in 1952 our good neighbors across the street opened a $5 savings account in my name at First National Bank of Oregon which much later became First Interstate Bank. I had an active account with them for over 29 years. I got my checks and went directly to the used car lot and paid off the car. Receiving a clear title and bill of sale. Leaving my beater car parked on the street I drove to the nearest US Bank. I told the teller I was interested in opening an account and if possible would like to speak to the manager. It was easily possible. In the manager’s office I explained what had happened. He told me I had made a good decision because First Interstate was circling the drain. 2 years later they were virtually gone. He assured me the cash escrow collateral plan was doable if I maintained twice the loan amount in my account. I produced my $10,XXX cashiers check. And he replied “Wow”! " that is more than sufficient". In less than 30 minutes I had my loan, a checking account (not available with First Interstate without credit) which if kept over $1,500 had free checks and no account fees plus free cashier checks and safe deposit box. Over the years US Bank has had 3 minor and one major hiccups but they were all resolved in a timely manner.
My problem with the lady with the Jaguar is the short-sightedness and lack of common sense. Driving around in a high-end luxury Euro sedan and not having $900 at hand–either cash or credit–just smacks to me of irresponsibility, especially with her Coach handbag and Ray-Ban sunglasses and matching jewelry. Sorry if I seem judgmental, but that’s how it seems to me.
As for the cash or credit thing, credit is not an all or nothing proposition. You’ve got to use some credit. You can’t live life on a cash basis. Most of us would be well into our 50’s if we waited to buy a house with cash. Leveraging yourself into a house (responsibly) is one of the smartest things a person can do to begin building wealth.
We also work on credit, don’t we? No one gets paid for a day’s work at the end of the day (save for day laborers). We work for a few weeks, then get paid. We are constantly being owed money by our jobs. On the other hand, we get to use electricity and water for a month or two at a time before having to pay for it. So we constantly owe others money as well.
You can’t save your way to success. Having cash in the bank doesn’t do any good, that money has got to be doing something to grow.
In normal economic conditions the bank would be a great place to park your money @ase. But these are not normal times. Fed policy has pushed peoples money out of CDs and into Wall St to pump up the numbers for Cramer and his pals. It’s a house of cards.
A good example of someone with maybe having more car than they should. A few years ago I was in town and seeing as how I was going right by a medical facility from whom I had just gotten a 50 dollar bill I decided to just stop off there and pay it.
Sitting at the light I see a brand new red Shelby Cobra Mustang convertible go by and I think WOW. It still had the dealer paper plate on it.
So going down the street I see that Cobra turn into the facility ahead of me with a well dressed lady getting out and entering before me.
She was inside picking up a bounced 140 dollar check and I heard her repeatedly apologizing about the"oversight" and it “being hard to keep things straight when you’re living week to week”.
I suppose the point could be made that the Shelby is keeping her broke and that then leads into the area of how much money she is going to have for Cobra maintance practices…
I wonder what the counter employee would have thought if she had seen what that woman pulled into the lot with.
@MarkM Yes, there are fakes galore. I have a fake $12,000 Rolex watch bought in the Bankok night market for $25. Visiting US sailors on R&R typically pay $85US.
When I see someone here with a fake Luois Vuitton $800 handbag, I sometimes ask: “How did you like Bankok?”
You can’t save your way to success.
I beg to differ. I can tell you why- that is EXACTLY how I got to where I am today. I have never once invested in stocks. Rather, I started early and saved rather than spent. I paid off my first modest house after 7 years. I paid off my second house after only 9 years. I didn’t get a new car until I was around 40 and then I paid cash. I can count on one hand the number of times I had to defer paying the full amount owed on my charge cards. I was never given anything in life and started from scratch. The miracle of compounding interest over time can work if you do not outpace your income…
i agree. it seems like the stock market is set up to almost fail occasional.
the price goes way up, the insiders sell everything and cash in bigtime, then the prices plummet and the small fry lose their butts, after which the insiders buy it allback at a fraction of what they sold it for.
lather rinse repeat
Actually, that is a very misinformed bit of “knowledge” that is frequently thrown around.
Yes, somebody who invests poorly in the stock market can lose his shirt, but that type of generality also applies to real estate ventures, collectibles, and virtually any other type of investment.
In fact, the annual rate of return for the S&P 500 averaged 9.8 percent between 1926 and 2010.
I am completely self-taught when it comes to investing, I started out investing very small sums, and–of course–I have made some bad choices with those investments from time to time, but the fact remains that I have managed to beat the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 for almost every quarter over the past 20 years.
Everyone needs a “rainy day fund” in some kind of savings account, but if you rely solely on savings accounts, you will never get a really good rate of return.
And, you don’t have to have a huge amount of money to invest. Most of the biggest corporations have Direct Investment plans that allow you to buy stock (frequently beginning with just one share) directly from them, with no broker involved. You can have your dividends reinvested in order to buy additional shares of the stock, thus allowing you to grow those holdings over time even if never add any additional money. That is how I became a long-term holder of stock in Exxon, Chevron, Marathon, and a few other high-yielding, safe stocks.
Just Google “Direct Investment Plans” and you will be surprised by the large number of very solid corporations that allow you to invest small sums directly with them.
Trust me…If I was able to do it, so can you!
The stock market is currently a fixed game. The Fed is holding the prime rate down and pumping the markets up. The gains on Wall St are the result of financial manipulation. I bought U-Haul in March of 2009 and sold it last winter. That investment was made on a dare when I advised a friend to not invest in GM and insisted that U-Haul would likely out perform it. Needless to say the friend lost his shirt along with his 401 and a sizable chunk of equity in his house. I did OK. And I’m not an investor at all. The friends financial adviser just shrugged off the faux pas.
Lets not be so negative. When you put your money in the bank, the money is used to lend to other people thus creating debt for which you are rewarded for your risk (I’ve never seen it more than 4% so don’t bellyache). When you put your money into stocks, your are buying a portion of business, whether foreign or US. That money is used to expand business operations. You are thus rewarded as that business succeeds or fails depending on how much other people think its worth. So why would a person favor investing in debt rather than in productive business? Beats me.
If bank CDs were offering you 8% interest and FDIC protection and income from the markets was taxed as wages would the market/bank comparison be somewhat more favorable to the banks. @Bing?