VA Loans

A comprehensive guide to certified pre-owned vehicle programs

Kim and I have been talking a lot about cars during the past few months.

She drives a 1996 Honda Accord with 226,000 miles on it. The car runs fine and has served her well, but she’s begun to think about the possibility of upgrading.

I still drive my beloved 2004 Mini Cooper, but the little guy has had some issues lately. (Right now, it’s in the shop because the clutch burned out. In the process of replacing that, the mechanic discovered that the transmission needed to be replaced — thanks to towing the car behind our RV for 15 months.)

Shaquille O’Neal once spent $1,000,000 in a single day

Think you’ve made some poor financial decisions before? Have you ever spent one million dollars in a single day? That’s what former NBA star Shaquille O’Neal did — before becoming a pro basketball player.

I go buy a $150,000 car. No negotiations. I don’t know nothing about negotiations. The guy could have told me $200,000 and I would have bought it. I go and get a black Mercedes because that’s what I always wanted: a black Mercedes and some nice wheels.

Ask the readers: How do you know when your car is dead?

Earlier this month, I shared a link to a comprehensive guide to certified pre-owned vehicle programs. In doing so, I mentioned that Kim and I both believe that you should drive a car until it dies. This prompted a great question from Tired Scientist in the comments. She wrote:

Exactly what is the definition of “until it dies”? My husband and I have gone around and around on this question ourselves. We both believe in driving a car “until it dies”, but disagree slightly on the definition of this–because, unlike with the human body, almost all problems on a car are fixable given enough money.

[…]

When is a car considered “dead”? When the cost of repairs exceed the value of the car? When the average monthly cost of repairs exceeds the amount a car payment would be? Is my husband right, and the car is “dead” once it tries to make you dead?

I’m not sure there’s any one right answer to this question. There are several ways to decide that a car is dead, and it’s up to you to decide which definition applies to you. Let’s look at a decision I made recently — then talk about what other people think.

My Mini Cooper

In April 2009, after years of wanting one, I bought a used Mini Cooper. I paid $15,600 to purchase a 2004 Mini with 60,000 miles on it. I’ve had that vehicle for over eight years now, and I’ve put another 75,000 miles on it. In that time, I’ve spent less than $1000 on repairs — until recently.

I love my Mini. I love how compact it is. I love its fuel economy. (It still gets over 30 miles per gallon even at this age!) I love how fun it is to drive. And I love how reliable the car has been despite not always being treated well. During our 15-month RV trip around the U.S., Kim and I towed the Mini behind the motorhome — and we used it for the kinds of off-road adventures that Minis were never intended to have.

That said, my Mini has started to show its age. Parts that are expected to wear out have begun to wear out. Plus, problems have begun to appear.

Two weeks ago, for instance, the car died while climbing the 16% grade near our house. The clutch went up in a cloud of stinky, stinky smoke. When I had the car towed to our mechanic, he found evidence that the transmission was failing. “It’ll cost about $1600 to fix the clutch,” he said. “And I found a used transmission I could install for about $1900.”

As much as I love my Mini, $3500 is a lot of money to put into repairs for an older car. In fact, that’s nearly as much as the car is worth! (According to the Kelley Blue Book website, my 2004 Mini Cooper is worth roughly $3741 if I were to try to sell it to a private party. It’s worth much less in dealer trade-in value.)

I had a decision to make: Do I scrap the Mini and buy a replacement? Or do I make the repairs and continue to drive an older car?

Is it better to rent or buy? How to know when renting a home makes sense

I’ve been a homeowner for 24 of the last 25 years. Based on this, you might think I’m an advocate of homeownership over renting. That’s not the case. The older I get, the more I appreciate there’s no correct answer in the perennial “is it better to rent or buy?” debate. Sometimes buying a home makes the most sense. Sometimes renting is the smarter choice.

In an editorial in the June 2007 issue of Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, Knight Kiplinger wrote, “It often costs less to rent. The annual cost of owning a property, be it a house or a condo, is usually greater than the cost of renting, after taxes.” I agree.

Today, let’s look at a handful of ways to evaluate the rent versus buy decision from a financial perspective.

The Price-to-Rent Ratio

One way to tell whether it’s better to rent or buy is by calculating the price-to-rent ratio (or P/R ratio). This number gives you a rough idea whether homes in your area are fairly priced. Figuring a P/R ratio is simple. All you need to do is:

  1. Find two similar houses (or condos or apartments), one for sale and one for rent.
  2. Divide the sale price of the one place by the annual rent for the other. The resulting number is the P/R ratio.

For example, say you find a $200,000 house for sale in a nice neighborhood. You find a similar house on the next block for rent for $1,000 per month (which works out to $12,000 per year). Dividing $200,000 by $12,000, you get a P/R ratio of 16.7. But what does this number mean?

Writing in The New York Times, David Leonhardt says, “A rent ratio above 20 means that the monthly costs of ownership well exceed the cost of renting.” That’s a little opaque, I know. Leonhardt is saying that the higher the P/R ratio, the more it makes sense to rent — and the less it makes sense to buy.

The normal P/R ratio range nationwide is between 10 and 14 (meaning it would cost between $1200 and $1600 to rent a $200,000 house). During the 1990s, just before the housing bubble, the national P/R ratio was usually between 14 and 15 (about $1100 to $1200 to rent a $200,000 house). During last decade’s housing bubble, national price-to-rent ratios rose to 22.73 (in 2005) then to 24.50 (in 2007) before the market collapsed. As most folks were rushing to buy homes, the numbers said they ought to be renting.

Based on this info, I’d argue that:

  • When price-to-rent ratios are under 12, it’s generally better to buy than to rent.
  • When price-to-rent ratios are between 12 and 15, the financial decision is murky.
  • When price-to-rent ratios climb above 15, you’re probably better off renting.

Nationwide numbers don’t tell the full story, of course. While the national price-to-rent ratio might be around 20, the actual numbers in your city could be very different.

Your credit score — and why it matters

For today’s edition of “back to basics” month at Get Rich Slowly, we’re going to talk about credit scores. What is a credit score? Why should you care?

As you go about your life, you leave a trail of transactions. You take out a mortgage, you buy a new car, you use your credit card to buy new clothes and your debit car to purchase groceries.

Every month, your creditors — the companies to which you owe money — send info about your recent activity to a variety of credit reporting agencies (commonly referred to as credit bureaus). Each agency collects this info into a file called a credit report.

Your credit report is a history of how well you’ve managed your credit. It contains info about where you’ve lived, how much you’ve borrowed, and whether you tend to pay your bills on time. It also notes if you’ve ever filed for bankruptcy.

The credit bureaus — Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion — sell your credit report to other businesses so they can decide whether to lend you money, sell you insurance, rent you a home, or give you a job.

Credit reports may be boring, but they’re vitally important because they provide the basis for your credit score.

How to Get Your Free Credit Report
The U.S. government has mandated that consumers be allowed to view their credit reports from each of the three major reporting agencies once every year. This is easy to do via the free AnnualCreditReport.com website. (Beware of scammy lookalikes. This one is the official government-sanctioned site.)

To get your report, you need to provide some basic info like your Social Security number. You might also need to answer some questions about current and/or past accounts. Sometimes these questions get tricky if you don’t have quick access to your files. (When Kim had to check her credit report recently, she couldn’t remember the amount of her mortgage payment from 2005. Her request was denied.)

If you’d like, you can obtain reports from all three credit reporting agencies at once. Or, you can stagger your requests, possibly requesting one report every four months from a different agency.

Your Credit Score

While your credit report collects info about your debt history, your credit score is a single number that summarizes all of that data.

The high cost of homeownership

This week, Kim and I hired a contractor for what we hope will be the last major project on the “country cottage” we bought last summer. We’re replacing our rotting back deck and installing a hot tub. It’s an expensive (and extensive) project.

The cost hurts all the more because we’ve already poured nearly $100,000 into performing needed repairs on this property. (In fact, as you may remember, we considered forgoing the deck replacement altogether.)

Budgeting for this job led me to reflect on the costs of owning a home. Like my colleague J.L. Collins (who believes a house is a terrible investment), I refuse to join to the cult of of homeownership. Yes, I own a home — and have for 24 out of the past 25 years — but I’m under no illusion that this is a smart financial move. Kim and I want to own an acre of land in the country, which is why we bought this place. We didn’t buy it because we think it’ll make us wealthy. (It seems to be having the opposite effect!)

Today, both for entertainment and catharsis, I want to spend some time talking about the high costs of homeownership. And lest you believe the stories below simply prove that I’m a fool with money, I want to point out that my experiences seem typical. Everyone I talk to about homeownership has similar tales to tell. I’ll bet you do too!

How much does your commute cost?

While I’m not a rabid anti-car crusader, there’s no doubt I think the U.S. is too car-centric. I understand the historical reasons behind our vehicle dependence — we’re a young nation with sprawling cities spread far apart — but I also believe that if you, as an individual, make an effort to live in a walkable (or bike-able) neighborhood, you can save tons of cash while enhancing your lifestyle.

How much can you save? Well, that’s tough to quantify. There are a lot of variables that go into the calculation.

The folks at Transportation Evolved, however, have made an effort to crunch the numbers. They’ve created a cost of commuting calculator that takes into account a wide variety of factors — then allows you to further explore how this cost affects your true hourly wage and the opportunity cost of lost investment income.

Reader question: Does repaying a loan hurt your credit score?

Last week, on my review of Kristin Wong’s new book Get Money!, a reader named Luke left an interesting comment. Luke wondered:

One thing that I’ve taken to heart is debt reduction. In my case, student loans. I refinanced a while back to get a lower rate and have been paying almost triple the monthly minimum to accelerate payoff. The goal was to finish the loan payments a few months before we buy our first home (which we are currently in the middle of saving for our 20% down).

But I’ve encountered a sort of catch-22. As the individual loans get rolled off when they get paid, it’s been hurting my credit score because my average age of credit is dropping. (I’m 27 years old.) This is exactly what I don’t need before applying for a mortgage.

How to use credit cards wisely: A definitive guide

It’s back to basics month at Get Rich Slowly! Today, we’re going to take a l-o-n-g look at how to use credit cards wisely. Believe it or not, credit cards can be a useful tool — so long as you don’t fall into debt.

For a long time, I thought credit cards were evil. Starting in college, I abused credit cards. As a result, I ended up deep in debt. Those two decades of debt sucked, and they led me to believe that credit cards were dangerous.

Well, credit cards are dangerous — but they’re not evil. Credit cards are a tool. Like any other tool, credit cards can be used to build or to destroy. Just as you’d treat a chainsaw with respect, you need to be careful with credit to avoid hurting yourself. If you use credit cards wisely, they can actually give you a financial edge!

Because this is a long article, I’ve create a table of contents so that you can jump to the section you need. (Or, you can read the entire thing, of course.)

Table of Contents

  1. How credit cards work
  2. Why use a credit card?
  3. Essential credit card skills
  4. How to use credit cards wisely
  5. How to choose a credit card
  6. How to dispute credit card charges
  7. How to cancel a credit card

Survey of Consumer Finances. The latest study, from 2016, found that:

  • 43.9% of American families have credit card debt, and
  • the average amount owed is $5700.

Clearly, lots of Americans continue to struggle to use credit cards wisely.

That said, not everybody who uses credit cards goes into debt. In fact, the Survey of Consumer Finances shows that over half of Americans use credit cards without going into debt. They treat them as a convenience.

True story: Last year, I went into a bank to apply for a new travel credit card. During the half-hour process, I chatted with the banker. “We banks don’t like people like you,” he told me. “I’m sure you’re a nice guy, but you pay your bill every month. We don’t make any money on you. Fortunately, 90% of people who use credit cards suck with money!” He told me banks are willing to lose money on the handful of folks who use credit cards wisely because they make so much money on the people who abuse them.