I was buying a used car from a dealer once and after we agreed on a price the sales rep and finance guys started with their whole “you don’t want to spend all your cash, keep it in the bank while you pay off the car…” BS and I shut that down pretty fast with “I’m not taking investment advice from a used car dealer.”
My kids are turning out to be pretty financially sound. My son who just left for college is quite good at planning and managing his money, but then again he’s always been a cheap ■■■. When he was 9 or 10 we were cleaning up after dinner one night when I said “OK, everyone in the car, we’re going out for ice cream.” He asked “can I stay home and have 5 dollars instead?”
If they are all doing so great then why all the stories of folks missing car payments. I just find it curious that we have 42 million in our population requiring food assistance plus all the emphasis on affordable housing. So yeah we can blame low paying jobs, but clearly some don’t fit that mold. The sociologist in me wants to dig a little deeper in the actual bottom line. Is it lack of math or economic sense, opportunity, single parenthood with bad choices of a mate, a male or female thing, etc? There are clear guarantees of being poor. Teenage pregnancy, single parenthood for whatever reason, lack of training and education, location, family support, and so on. Our parents that made it through the depression, two or more wars, booms and busts, seemed to be able to weather the storm one way or another. Looking for menu ideas that I might be able to handle, I ran across a video on meals that mothers put together with meager food supplies to feed the family during hard times. Minnesota had a 174% increase in SNAP in one year. Just wondering why.
You missed the point. I never implied that all young folks are doing well. Anecdotal evidence is just an example of circumstances for some subsets of any given group.
And, the one advantage that the young folks in Hoboken have is that many/most of them don’t own a car, simply because the incredible congestion in that mile-square town makes for horrendous parking problems. Luckily for them, public transit is readily available.
Anyway, I refuse to tar all of the younger generation (or any other demographic) with the same brush, and–IMO–you shouldn’t either.
SOME. Low paying jobs account for almost 50% of working adults. Homeless camps all across the country are filled with working adults. These working people who are on SNAP and other government programs which are subsidized by the rest of us while companies like Walmart make BILLIONS in profits. How about they take a little less profit and start paying them a livable wage so we the taxpayers don’t have to take up the slack. I’m sure you can find a certain percentage of people on government programs who are there because of their own problems (drugs, teen pregnancy..etc…etc). But that’s NOT the majority. Not even close. There are about 40,000 active US service families on SNAP. We can’t even pay our soldiers enough.
Well conjecture again. We don’t know the circumstances. Ag asked for data from the states to review the participants. Something like over 20 states refused to supply it. So hard to say. But yeah depending on rank, housing allowance, etc. some soldiers have a hard time providing the essentials. Still I remember the guys that got their re-up bonus and went out to buy a new car. Being in the service and married though is a hard one.
… and with US military veterans!
Even though the number of homeless veterans decreased last year, the current estimate is that ~33,000 US veterans are currently unhoused, and that is a national disgrace.
Lots of them near here have actual department set up for internet sales. I have two brothers in different states that had done it before me so I thought why not try? I hate the games. So the local Toyota dealer has their page with new cars. When you click on one, it has all the details including a side box with three tabs- finance, lease or cash pricing. Choose one and the price is displayed including any other fees. Then you click on that and you can talk, chat or email with the internet sales people. I did a chat and they called me back within 30 minutes to get my card info for the down-payment. It was due to be delivered in a 6 weeks. Actually, I gave them a card number but they never even charged anything to it. That made me a little nervous that I actually had the car secured but they reassured me it was saved in my name. I got a couple emails updating status but at the end of the 6 weeks, they sent email, your car is in, here’s the total, when would you like to stop in to take delivery? Easy peasy…
I remember in the early 2000s, one of our dealer’s salesmen volunteered to become THE dedicated internet salesman
While the other guys were hustling to make sales to walk-in customers, going through the whole feast and famine cycles, this guy was making money at a steady pace. The other guys came and went, but the internet salesman remained
Starting when I leased the Prius I have only dealt with the internet sales division. I get a form price and less games from the dealer. I walked from a Prius at another dealer over 500 dollars. The salesman took a tone with me and said are we really going to kill the deal over being 500 dollars apart? Yes I said, if its no big deal 500 dollars then why don’t you meet that price.
Because 500 dollars was a big deal. I had enough of their games and sat there before I left and board my engine and barked the tires into reverse. They like taking a tone with people but get offended when you match their energy.
I had about giving up but got a quote from an internet sales consultant. She was wonderful, playing NO games. When I got there I already knew what the numbers were and they didn’t try to change anything.
When I bought my Tahoe I drove to a neighboring state luckily that dealer didn’t play any games also honoring the proce we agreed upon.
I likely will never buy from another dealer unless its thru the internet sales division.
Oh, I also sent the salesman that took a tone with me a picture of me holding 5 one hundred dollar bills in front of my new car. 500 saved is 500 earned. The dealer I leased the car from sold the car at a fair price and made a fair profit.
I’ve never bought one, but I’ve read that if they think you’re going to finance with them they give you a lower price, that you can lead them on then pay cash.
My 16 year old is no slouch either. She prefers to pack a lunch from home instead of eating cafeteria food. One night packing her lunch she had 3 of those little snack-size ziploc bags with strawberries in them. My wife asked why she was packing 3 bags. She said they traded around at lunch.
“What do you get in trade for a small bag of strawberries?”
It was a text message not an actual photograph, but he got the point I’m sure. He wanted to take a tone with me and insult me over 500 dollars implying that 500 dollars isn’t a big deal. Well whats good for the goose is good for the gander, why is 500 dollars a big deal to the dealership then if it shouldn’t be a big deal to me.
If he wouldn’t have taken such a Smart Alec tone with me then it wouldn’t have been necessary to put on a display. Yes I roared my silverado and slipped it into reverse giving out a nice bark, I made sure no people were in the immediate area.
I believe it served as a warning to a couple walking the lot to be wary of those fools, hopefully saving them from a bad deal like they tried to shove down my throat. And we hadn’t even gotten to the finance and insurance guy! Imagine the nonsense that dealer would have tried to pull.
Some people are taking advantage of the benefits only because they are offered. Some years ago, an acquaintance, a foreign-born female was advising others that unemployed housewives should apply for food assistance. I tried to explain that this depends on household income.
Certain self-employed people have no documented income: lawn service, flee market merchants, even auto body and auto repair. Are those families on food assistance? The man that performs yard work for my neighbor claimed that he paid off his house. I don’t know if he is collecting government assistance, but I doubt he pays income tax.
Years ago, while sitting in the corner bar after work, people offer to sell their Electronic Benefits Transfer cards for 1/2 price. Those people don’t need food, they want drugs.
After thousands of asylum seekers arrive in a given area, there is an apartment shortage and rent prices escalate. The cost of a one-bedroom apartment in my area has doubled in recent years, that is one reason people can no longer afford their car payments.
Last year, a politician pledged to build 3 million homes in response to the housing shortage. With 21 million immigrants, that is 7 immigrants to a home. Is that the best solution to the problem?
