Not worth buying a used vehicle if asking price is crazy.
Some won’t budge on their firm asking price thinking it’s made of gold.
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- Thread starter GON
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Not worth buying a used vehicle if asking price is crazy.
Some won’t budge on their firm asking price thinking it’s made of gold.
I haven't been seeing 90% of MSRP on off lease Hondas in my area. More like 70-75%. Which, when you consider the dealership is marking them back up again to make a profit and has at least looked them over and fixed anything that's obviously wrong with it, and given it an oil change and washed it and put it out for sale again... That's not a bad deal really.
If you're buying a GM vehicle, the remaining value after 3 years is hideous if you're the person turning one back in. If you're buying one, then their certified 3 year old models are closer to 60-65% and that's at retail. The Japanese models are known for holding a better portion of their value year after year, and that will help protect a certified used car buyer from being in an absolute freefall, which continues with most of the Euro and North American models.
Why do GMs tend to lose so much value? Well, they have a "reputation" right? GM isn't building them very well these days. They were lulzy before the GM bankruptcy and they were even lulzier after the bankruptcy. More plasticware, more cut-rate parts, mo' problems. And they still use the coolant that turns into jello, so you need to flush and flush and flush like Rand Paul described his toilet issues, or else bye bye heater and then bye bye engine. There's just more you'll have to do with it, and even then your annual repair cost will be higher, so the cost of the vehicle has to reflect what people know will happen. The book value hurts when the thing isn't made well.
Where you buy the vehicle matters. If you go to Carmax or Carvana, you'll get a sketchier vehicle (mystery bag....they're not the dealer of the company that sells them and do not have the Certified program) than you will if you go to the dealer.
And you may not even get your title with Carvana. Illinois charged one of their execs with hundreds of counts of title fraud for sending a ream of temporary tags instead of the title. I don't remember where that case went, but the Secretary of State got fed up with that guy and his excuses.
And the price is higher. These places charge more, people still go there. They do in-house financing for people whose credit is bad, and when outfits look the other way on major credit blemishes, you pay for that too.
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Credit card rewards are pretty sweet. If you pay the statement balance, you pay no more than you would for the things you charged anyway, and honestly there's no faster, easier, or cheaper way to build credit. The grace period is mandated to be 21 days after the statement closes, and they have to count any payment initiated or received by the end of the day on the due date. Many banks give you up to 28 days even though that's a week more than they have to. So they're not breathing down your neck.
Before the Credit CARD Act, they were changing due dates on people and saying they had to receive the payments by noon, or on a holiday or a Sunday or something then charging outrageous fees, but that's illegal now. The Credit CARD Act doesn't apply to business cards, which is one reason I don't recommend those to people even if the bank will look the other way and stipulate that you're a Sole Proprietor. Personal cards are a lot more straightforward than they once were.
Some of those places that allow you to pay for a fake loan to get something on your credit report are out there, but who wants to do that?
Without positive credit history, which takes years to build, you will either have an indeterminate FICO score, or a bad one if a hospital or other bill collector puts down something negative. With either of these cases, it makes it hard or impossible to even rent an apartment, or buy a house. Employers may look at you funny.
It is possible to buy a house without a credit score, but you limit your options. Dave Ramsey says do manual underwriting, but what that means is you'll face stricter scrutiny than a person who walks in and does normal underwriting with a great FICO mortgage score.
Folks who are 30, 40, 50 years old and have a blank credit file, people are going to read into that and assume you had a bankruptcy or something, even if you didn't. Like, normal people have something on their file by this point. So if you see a 50 year old dude walk in there with a blank file, you assume this guy probably filed bankruptcy when he was in his 30s and he just never interacted with the credit system again. So they start to infer things.
If you're not going to get a credit card, probably the easiest and safest way to build credit is to get a credit card, that acts like a debit card.
They have bank accounts now that you go pay for stuff and then the card pays itself back out of the bank account the very next day. It's going to cost you a nominal fee, but you'll built positive credit history and it's cheaper than one of those stupid Self Loans.
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I used to work with a guy, named Brandon (I won't mention the last name of course.)
He told me he was going to quit the company we worked for because he couldn't budget a bi-weekly paycheck.
He said the other employer would pay him $3 an hour less and it would pay him weekly.
I said, "So you're going to have a bigger problem because you'll be paid less money."
He said, "But they pay me weekly."
I was like, "Oh, okay then."
I have to manage monthly and bi-weekly in our household and I still don't really worry too much about when it comes in except I usually freeze the interest rate I get paid on it for 13 months with a no penalty CD currently at 4.15%. I sit on lots of cash. Missing a particular paycheck would be easy.
And you go, "But you get paid more and you live cheaply." and I say, "You're right, but I also didn't really care about bi-weekly pay 20 years ago at Walmart because I was managing a budget then too." In Brandon's case, his wife was working, but they had gone out and gotten this **** mortgage on a house under one of those ARM setups, and lost the house in 2008 and threw the keys in the mailbox.
They gave their daughter a turbulent life, and needed to ask the FSSA for food stamps and WIC and stuff.
BLS CPI says that used vehicle prices have been going down for months while new are still on the rise.
With the latest round of steel and aluminum tariffs, both might start going up again, but how much remains to be seen.
Yes, Costco has that Citi card, but I think the reward is only 2% and paid annually?
Have you looked into the USBank Shopper card? I believe that "Warehouse Clubs" are one of the "pick your own" options for the 3%, and there's a list of stores that includes Amazon, Walmart, IKEA, some hardware stores, and others at 6% all the time (24 merchants total).
https://www.nerdwallet.com/reviews/credit-cards/us-bank-shopper-cash-rewards
I don't know if you have to activate the 3% every quarter in those categories. Right now I already have 6% at Amazon on a card with no AF and a 3% flat everywhere, but I might look at the Shopper here in about 4-5 months.
Get to da Shoppa!!! (Sorry.)
Anyway, you sound like a guy that spends enough that it would easily outdo the $95 annual fee that starts on the second year, and there's a welcome bonus of like $250 with $2,000 spend in first 120 days, I think.
You have to watch it with CostCo. They cut out AmEx completely, but they have to accept Visa because that's the one Citi's card works on.
Yes, Number one reason to "help" your credit score would be to get a secured card backed with loaded cash on it or low allowance. That could help you get a lower interest loan on a house or SUV etc. It's amazing how well I've done w/o ever doing that sort of thing though. My house mortgage is at a 2.50% fixed rate. It's the only Mortgage I've ever had & the house I live in was bought by my grandparents in 1985 so I will die in this house. I've also listened to about 1 hours worth of Ramsey. He's a clown that believes in nonsense (My opinion only). Ramsey type seem to be positioned for the folks that make one poor financial choice after another. Not saying i've never been there but I had my own place at age 18 & even my son bought is own house at 17. The funny thing is he told me recently he got a credit card. I told him to pay it off each month. I do appreciate your well thought out responses.
Some of it is nonsense but the people that listen to him are always calling in having made the worst financial decisions imaginable, so pay it off, cut it up, and don't ever go near it again, is advice for those sorts.
If you owe a revolving balance on a credit card like some of these people do where it's several thousand or tens of thousands, at 20-30% interest, you've done messed up. The rewards don't matter. It is hurting you more than the rewards will ever be worth.
Have been liking the Capital One Quicksilver MasterCard. Decent cash back or airline miles. Of course it's setup for monthly auto payments. A trend I've noticed that I don't like is businesses passing on the processing fee, although I'm a fan of businesses that give a discount for cash...my mechanic for one, HVAC outfit that replaced our HVAC in our beach house...10% discount for cash.
Capital One is kind of a weird bank. It's all computerized. They give me credit cards with huge spending limits and then when I try to open a bank account there, they say they have no proof I exist. So I ask them "So you have no proof that I exist but you're fine with extending $60,000 in credit card limits to me and you want me to get a car loan?"
They said talk to Early Warning Systems. I have no trouble opening up bank accounts anywhere else. There's also no reconsideration of anything their computer has decided.
They offered my spouse a $300 welcome bonus on a Quicksilver card and did a triple pull and said "too many open credit cards", and that's with a FICO score just 11 points lower than mine (802 and 791).
Really what's going on here with my spouse is they looked at that and they said "This person pays their bills, and they never revolve and we're not going to make interest, and they're clearly using each card for its top reward category and so we're just not going to compete with all that."
Those banks are getting wise to churners. And Capital One is also paying attention to dormant credit cards or people who have all these high credit limits and aren't using them and they send letters out sometimes. I've never gotten one. But they say basically "We're going to review your account and cut your limit. To opt out of this review, here's a number."
And you can call it and say "I'm planning to spend more in the next year." it's all automated and they skip you for another year.
But credit card limits can go up or down. They all keep an eye on you and see if you're making late payments or starting to revolve more and more on other cards, or the economy can get better or worse causing charge-offs to go up or down in general. Right now they go up pretty much every quarter.
So we're starting to see more banks balance chase people who they consider risky. And people can be so entitled and it's always funny to see a bank like Citi or Synchrony balance chase someone who is obviously not paying their bill off like a person who had any money would do.
Businesses that charge more to credit card users generally just don't get my business because I hate carrying cash. It's stupid.
And if you get mugged or lose your wallet or something, nobody replaces your cash.
Illinois just passed a landmark law that says credit card companies can't charge interchange, beginning in July, on taxes and tips. So they're suing us in federal court because they don't want their interchange fees to go down.
The State also repealed a law that just gave retailers a ridiculous open-ended 1.35% for collecting sales tax, which is now capped at $10,000 worth per month. So the State raises revenues, but makes the business break-even by cutting the interchange fee they have to pay to the bank, so it's a two-step and a new tax on banks, which I think is hilarious. The banks lost their bid for an injunction on the law, so we'll see.
Discover has already gotten worse in anticipation of being acquired by Capital One.
They ditched pretty much all their network-level perks ages ago and have not innovated on the rewards structure in years. A 5% category revolver was cool 20 years ago but most banks have better gimmicks. They also offloaded their student loan division and have laid off a bunch of people in Illinois.
Capital One probably has no intention of honoring their Community Benefits Agreement. Lord knows the people in charge of the nation these days won't hold them to it.
It'll be T-Mobile/Sprint all over again. (They promised lower bills and more jobs, then sacked 25,000 people and doubled bills.)
Whatever they promise to get the merger through, they tend to lie. Companies in general do. Capital One will be a very dangerous bank when it takes on Discover's depositors and credit card accounts and an entire network.
They'll have to do a lot of work to expand the Discover network. It's generally well accepted in North America and spotty anywhere else. They say there's merchants and banks and then nobody knows what the hell a Discover card is.
https://www.cnbc.com/select/average-credit-card-balance-by-state/
Seems to be rooted in a 2019 Experian report.
Experian is a credit reporting agency so they know full well how indebted each American with credit cards is.
But it says the total credit card debt was $930 billion in 2019. It's more like $1.2 trillion in early 2025.
There's a lot of people out there who need to tighten their belts and grow up and stop spending so much money on useless things.
Go thrifting, take a trip to a national park instead of a $20,000 week at Disney World. Make coffee at home. Eat your leftovers. Stop buying new cars. Etc.
Also, I can tell you that they'd probably love me. Putting Chicago rent on a credit card every month and then delaying the payment to the due date where it pays itself reaps me about $20 a month in card rewards and interest on the float period.
But it would make it look like I was in more "debt" than I am. Which is all temporary and causal.
The rent alone is making me about $250 a year, About half of which I don't even have to pay income tax on (because it's a rebate from the BILT card).
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What's interesting, is, pop quiz--what's the difference between someone who say pays a cc statement in full every month, compared to a person who carries a debt? My hunch is lifestyle, not income. I do admit I don't dwell on say buying $35 worth of oil filter wrenches, I have a problem, I look on amazon, get the best price I can, and buy them. So in this case, am I treating this purchase differently because I'm using the amazon 5% and not debit or cash? Not really. Same as when I had an unexpected BMW repair at the dealer. I overpaid by $500 over an indie because I wanted to be done and not shop online, go to indie, take another day off from work. But the purchase was paid off in full next month, so the buying decision was not altered by using credit. Say a family goes to Disney and spends $10,000, of course it will be on credit imho, convenience and rewards. But one family will pay it off in full when the statement arrives, another will let it roll. Again I think the difference is lifestyle--one saved up, one may not have, both are committed to the trip. my .02
btw I do have one debt, that is the HVAC which was 0% equal payments. I have 16 payments left of 60. Price was same cash or finance, I believe finance is a tool to get the deal signed. Because of all the quotes I had gotten, only 2 of the bunch could do 0% on the full amount. The other 4+ could only do 10k (off the bat they stated they could call and "try" to do more, maybe full amount). This tells me there are terms between the vendor and the CC issuer. What I also revealed here on the forum is my new 2020 HVAC was over $10k lol I shudder to think what it would be in 2025, maybe 30-50% more? Just googling I can see serious increases on the condenser and furnace.
btw I do have one debt, that is the HVAC which was 0% equal payments. I have 16 payments left of 60. Price was same cash or finance, I believe finance is a tool to get the deal signed. Because of all the quotes I had gotten, only 2 of the bunch could do 0% on the full amount. The other 4+ could only do 10k (off the bat they stated they could call and "try" to do more, maybe full amount). This tells me there are terms between the vendor and the CC issuer. What I also revealed here on the forum is my new 2020 HVAC was over $10k lol I shudder to think what it would be in 2025, maybe 30-50% more? Just googling I can see serious increases on the condenser and furnace.
Debt is good if and only if you can pay it off every month. Also a loan or mortgage that you pay off on time every month AND pay additional principle towards the loan. Meaning paying off early.
Paying off every month as well as having a fair amount of UNUSED Revolving credit (credit cards) signals you are not financially stressed and easily control your spending habits with maturity.
I say this because we never ever pay with cash and every purchase we make we get a min 2% or 3% cash back and my wife and I purchases are also 5% cash back on many items using 3- 5% cards.
Ok, so let's skip to the other important stuff. Interest rates on loans are dirt cheap AND cost of home insurance, car insurance, motorcycle insurance, boat insurance, is rock bottom in our household. Stupid cheap, what you pay depends on your responsible handling of credit.
We dont really carry loans however we do have a small mortgage that we apply an extra $700 a month towards the principle each and every month. For the first time in gosh well over a decade or more we do have a loan on a 2025 Chevy Equinox. Why? Because we didn't know we were going to buy a car that day. We had two choices, take the car and bring a check back next week to the dealer but with our credit rating GM gave us 0% for 3 years. So what the heck, this eliminated the trip back to the dealer and all done - out the door. But not only that, at least initially Im collecting (rough numbers) $100 a month in interest with the money sitting in my cash back account and GM money costing nothing. IT is true that maybe I could have got more off the price of the car but with the interest in the bank I think I came out a little ahead AND I didnt have to bring a check back to the dealer.
life insurance(?) health insurance(?) Credit also matters.
Anyway, for all you young, be mature, dont buy what you cant afford, pay it off every month and for any loans, pay on time, all the time. MY home, boat, two cars and motorcycle insurance bill combined will be less than $2,700 for the year this year and I am well covered with liability ins. Credit score and no claims is everything. Never submit a claim on homeowners insurance if you can pay it yourself for any minor issues as you will pay higher premiums down the road. In addition to credit scores, everyone has an insurance industry risk score. (or something to that effect, they know who you are and what your claims are, shared information)
For a little creditability here are my scores from two agencies.
(Transunion)
(Experian)
Paying off every month as well as having a fair amount of UNUSED Revolving credit (credit cards) signals you are not financially stressed and easily control your spending habits with maturity.
I say this because we never ever pay with cash and every purchase we make we get a min 2% or 3% cash back and my wife and I purchases are also 5% cash back on many items using 3- 5% cards.
Ok, so let's skip to the other important stuff. Interest rates on loans are dirt cheap AND cost of home insurance, car insurance, motorcycle insurance, boat insurance, is rock bottom in our household. Stupid cheap, what you pay depends on your responsible handling of credit.
We dont really carry loans however we do have a small mortgage that we apply an extra $700 a month towards the principle each and every month. For the first time in gosh well over a decade or more we do have a loan on a 2025 Chevy Equinox. Why? Because we didn't know we were going to buy a car that day. We had two choices, take the car and bring a check back next week to the dealer but with our credit rating GM gave us 0% for 3 years. So what the heck, this eliminated the trip back to the dealer and all done - out the door. But not only that, at least initially Im collecting (rough numbers) $100 a month in interest with the money sitting in my cash back account and GM money costing nothing. IT is true that maybe I could have got more off the price of the car but with the interest in the bank I think I came out a little ahead AND I didnt have to bring a check back to the dealer.
life insurance(?) health insurance(?) Credit also matters.
Anyway, for all you young, be mature, dont buy what you cant afford, pay it off every month and for any loans, pay on time, all the time. MY home, boat, two cars and motorcycle insurance bill combined will be less than $2,700 for the year this year and I am well covered with liability ins. Credit score and no claims is everything. Never submit a claim on homeowners insurance if you can pay it yourself for any minor issues as you will pay higher premiums down the road. In addition to credit scores, everyone has an insurance industry risk score. (or something to that effect, they know who you are and what your claims are, shared information)
For a little creditability here are my scores from two agencies.
(Transunion)
(Experian)
Amazingly ditto
Between the Costco card and Fido Elan card we scored healthy cash in 2024. Did nothing but decide to pay off on day of payment due notification, day due or split the difference- hahaha
I knew someone like that. He preferred the "1st and 16th" bi-monthly pay checks because they were bigger.
I am a huge proponent of teaching personal finance in grade school and up.
As an educator, oilBabe got 6 or 7 checks at the end of the school year for the summer. (One could choose to just be paid during the school year or have extra (smaller) checks cut at the end of the contract year to make up the difference.
The checks went into savings and one at a time transferred to checking over the summer.
Yes, she could have received fewer checks and put a fraction in during the school year. Interest wasn't enough to make that a worth while choice.
That's how she chose to deal with it.
Now that she's retired, it's one check a month. She makes it work
No processing fee for debit card which I use.
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