Not car related..

[nick8086]

Not car related..  I hope you read this,, They are or will be the next guy that may buy our cars,,

 

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/homeless-college-students-a-growing-concern-on-campuses/ar-BBDbdLi?li=BBnbfcL&ocid=mailsignout

 

I bought a house for each my kids.. Just for this reason. They  won't be able to afford it..I get the tax write off. "Rental".  until they move out..

 

May be some day.. He will post I got dad;s car.. Here is a pic of him . behind the wheel..

 

 

 

 

 

..

 

[Frantz]

I've often thought about the demise of the American estate. My grandfather served in WWII and took advantage of the GI Bill and left the family farm to go into the professional life. While thankfully my grandparents didn't squander the money from selling the farm and it's still intact... it's just investments. My grandmother is still alive in her mid 90's. My hope is my parents also live at least that long, so by the time anything reaches me I should be old and established myself.... My moms side was already in business generations ago and went from well off to avg during the depression. There isn't an estate property that makes getting established easier from either side. Now my wife's family is a bit different. We rent from her dad on the family farm, and while not a huge property (aprx 150 acres), it still is a working farm. We pay a reduced rent from the market and I help out as his health isn't the best, and it's just the right thing to do. It's a mutually beneficial situation, and should have growing benefits for him as he ages. Property makes this possible. Since folks leave the homestead for professional purposes, it becomes "better" to have older folks living in community homes. Often their old home is no where near the kids, and they'd rather not move to a whole new state. Plus the younger generations often haven't bought homes big enough to have another person or two move in. I get that it's a good social place too, but it's also going to eat up the financial estate potential for many folks. Whole life self sufficiency was never meant to be an individual game, but I do worry that we've taking it too far away from the family game it ought to be IMO.

[trimacar]

It's such a different world now, sounds like a cliché but it's true.

 

We have a daughter with a granddaughter, got divorced and couldn't afford a place to live with the job she has.  We bought a small house "for her", and she pays a modest stipend to live in it, much less than the note.  However, if one looks at the overall transaction, it's still a good investment from my standpoint, and equity buildup is slightly more than my share of the note, so it's a positive.

 

We go to the grocery store and I don't understand how some people feed themselves, the prices are so high.  Fifty bucks and you carry it out in two little plastic bags. 

 

As far as some youngsters getting started, one of the problems I've seen is that they want it all, and they want if RIGHT NOW.  They don't gradually build up to the better house and better car, they try to buy it all from the first.

 

Reminds me of a banker friend, had a relatively small bank in south Louisiana.  He'd have a young couple come in, wanting to buy farm land and begin farming.  They'd get the loan, and with the proceeds from the loan buy the farm, first thing they did was build a big fancy house and buy a Cadillac for the lady, THEN they started thinking about farming.  That's backwards, you start small and build yourself up.

 

Cars can be the same.  I once had an early 30's Chrysler sedan, traded for a beautiful '37 Buick.  Traded the Buick for a beautiful 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham (yes, one of the Pininfarina bodied ones).  I kept thinking that if trades continued I could work up to trading for a Duesenberg!  Alas, sold the Cadillac and it went to Alaska, wonder where it is now...

[SC38dls]

We lived in an rural area outside Chicago a 45 acre hilly parcel was sold as a housing development. The homes were built as McMansion's on a quarter acre lot. The taxes were more than our six acre place mortgage each year. The young people that purchased them would buy drapes to cover windows as they had no furniture. They would always ask me when I was going to junk that old truck I kept next to the barn. They never understood my answer that I was working on restoring it as I had the money to do it. They would say why not just take it to a shop and have it done. Put it on the credit card. Most had to move within a few years as they couldn't afford the life style 

[capngrog]

I don't understand the point of the AP article on homeless students.  How can someone who is homeless afford to go to college?  When I was in college and ran out of money, I dropped out and got a full time job.  I had financial assistance in the form of the G.I. Bill, for which I was thankful, because it was just enough to pay for books.  I guess that some of the housing I enjoyed while in college could have been termed "precarious"; however, I'm not sure what the article's reference to "precariously-housed" means, other than living from paycheck-to-paycheck.  I do, however, have some passing familiarity with the term, "food-insecure", because, at times, I literally did not know where my next meal was coming from.  My story was, and is not now unique, since many people back then and currently sacrifice much to make it through college.

 

I'm guessing that the point of the AP article is that there should be some sort of "Program" to take care of homeless folks who decide to attend college.  My college career ended long ago (1969), but I'm somewhat aware that there are many programs currently in existence that assist college students.  Guess who pays for all of these programs ... college students and taxpayers!  Federally-administered college loans are reportedly relatively easy to obtain, while the rising costs of college have far outstripped the rate of inflation.  Could there be a link?  TINSTAAFL (There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch)!

 

I think that the comments of frantz, trimacar and SC38DLS are on the money and quite pertinent to any discussion of our current national economic plight.

 

Prepare for the worst and hope for the best,

Grog

 

P.S. To help ensure that posts in this thread are car-related, I think that we should petition the "government" to develop a program to purchase all of our collector cars and give them to the needy, homeless college students.  This would definitely be a win-win situation since it would prop up the prices of the collector car market, furnish transportation for the less fortunate and incentivize the new owners to learn the fundamentals of automotive maintenance.

[auburnseeker]

You never make money or get ahead paying interest. 

The only Interest I pay is on my Mortgage and being self employed,  I can write that off.  We save and purchase our vehicles used with the exception of my wife's truck which cost as much 3 years old with 36KMI as a brand new one.  I sold a car and we paid cash for that. 

We are paying ahead on our mortgage every month as well.  When we reamortized it using the money from the sale of our old houses to pay down the principal, (we had 2 smaller houses we bought before meeting that weren't very expensive and sold them after having them over 10 years so they had equity in them as we had both paid our mortgages off on them) We  kept the payments the same so we automatically are paying more on the principal every month. 

As you would expect we also use credit cards frequently but pay them off monthly.  In today's day and age it's hard to not use one especially in my business which generates 0 cash. 

You also have to be  a bit frugal these days.  My wife is a pro at coupon shopping.   I think she sees it as a challenge as to how much she can save. 

[trimacar]

1 hour ago, auburnseeker said:

You never make money or get ahead paying interest. 

The only Interest I pay is on my Mortgage and being self employed,  I can write that off.  

I agree about the comment on paying interest, UNLESS you're paying interest on a purchase that's making you more money than the interest.  Thus, having a rental house where the rental is equal to or more than the note, you're making money in the form of building equity.  The same is true of borrowing money for a business, if the business can pay the note AND put money in your pocket.

 

I keep thinking of the show Seinfeld, one episode Kramer talks about "writing it off" and it goes on that no one really knows what that means, when a business just "writes it off".  Everyone can deduct interest from income on a residence, your business can "write off" a calculated percentage of your house note (and other house expenses, proportionately) based on how many square feet you're using for storage, office, etc.

[JACK M]

interesting. I had the same thoughts about "The American Dream".

The jobs, rate of pay, cost of living, price of real estate etc. makes it about impossible for even a two income family to get it together to buy that first home.

I have been fortunate in my life's endeavors and was able to help with some of that. I didn't make any big gifts, but was able to have some money to loan at no interest to at least get them started.

I have been paid back and we are all happy.

I am sure we have all had those thoughts about what is going to happen to future generations. What are we leaving for our kids to deal with. Big national debts, out of control health care, outrageous housing costs, professional politicians that are in it for themselves (not by the people and for the people anymore) It goes on and on.

Now I'm getting mad .

[auburnseeker]

That would be one of the few exceptions on interest.  We calculated on buying the new truck all the ways to purchase it from leasing with a buy out to all the different interest rates to see what our final price was and not having a way to make more with the money we had, decided to just purchase it outright.  I figured we could always finance a portion of it later if I needed to pull some money back out to invest in something I knew I could make money with. 

I meant it in general with the way most people finance everything right down to stretching the loans out as long as possible to shrink that monthly payment. 

Business borrowing is a whole different game.   You are usually only borrowing if you see a way to grow your business and make money. 

I agree with what you are saying though.  I just didn't go in depth enough when I wrote my original response.

[trimacar]

Understood.  I have a son in law in the new car business, he's a sales manager...and he loves it when someone comes in and says "I can only pay XXX a month".....those are the people who end up paying thousands more for the car than the average Joe....

 

With very low interest rates on car notes, though, as long as you have cash flow coming in, I'd rather keep that big sum of money in the bank, and pay the monthly note from the cash flow.....then you end up with the vehicle AND the money, albeit at a slightly higher price......this comment is true only for low interest rates, though....some of us remember the days of double digit interest, yikes....

[Frank DuVal]

Like the only car note I ever had, on the recent purchase, was 0%. I thought about paying cash, but, why? 0% is hard to beat!

[Frantz]

I think another problem is magnified by this article. The notion that college is universally good and of good value needs to be scrutinized. First, it's possible to get a very good paying job without college or even technical school. Mostly limited to sales and entrepreneurship... but those are the foundations of capitalist economies. Moving up you have the technical training and traditional blue collar skilled jobs. They pay well and it's hard to outsource many of these jobs to other countries, since much of the work must be done here by it's nature. There is still room to start with a diploma and work into these skilled jobs too, but it is probably better to get professional training and then start right out in a higher paying job. There is a role for college. For law, for sciences and engineering, and that's about it (sciences has a very broad scope). But these communications degrees, economics, sociology, religion, etc... these degrees do NOT offer a return on value. Education too would be better taught through apprenticeships... heck the system even knows that by having teachers meet continuing education requirements throughout a teachers career. While our society has created an artificial return on value by requiring a degree (that doesn't have to have anything to do with the job), this is not a true value, and it's the reason for inflated cost. When we've come up with the idea that everyone must go to college in order to be hire-able, we create burdens for people for the sake of institution. I did go to college several times, it was never for me. I was in the army for about 8 years and learned plenty! The job I learned the most at was working for Cremos tools (long time Carlisle and Hershey Chinese tool vendors). They'd have me meet at their store at 2am, load a truck, travel to a show, unload a truck, work with people, build engine stands, pack up, and drive home. Those folks worked hard and I learned any useful value of work ethic I've managed to muster from them. I simply applied it to everything going forward. When I got to college, the effort felt wasted so I moved on. When I was in the service, it came in pretty darn handy. Selling vehicles, I am not a top producer, but I'll be I have more difficult sales than almost anyone else. I don't wait for lay downs, I find folks that value effort with loyalty. This article seems to encourage the notion that college should be a means to get out of a rut. I think common sense rejects that, but society, and several generations, want it to be true in order to validate their own efforts to the rat race. 

[Frantz]

Quote

Like the only car note I ever had, on the recent purchase, was 0%. I thought about paying cash, but, why? 0% is hard to beat!

Generally speaking when you take 0% you're giving up a rebate.... I'd say you're better off with the rebate and then getting a 3% loan, and taking your money and getting 5-10% growth on that. Time value of money, opportunity cost, and all that college jazz!

Though if you have an expensive vehicle and long term, the interest could end up being more than the rebate given up... I suppose my only real point is, it's not free money, you're at least paying the rebate amount.

Edited June 26, 2017 by Frantz (see edit history)

[Frank DuVal]

Rebate was not offered. 0% based on credit rating.

 

TNSTAAFL, I know.

[nick8086]

Just on a side note..: companies  are paying 20K to 50K to get skill workers.. In job that no one wants..

 

!. welding

2. hvac

3. Diesel Mechanic.

 

 

.

[SC38dls]

I had football scholarships to division2 schools. My parents told me I wanted to be an aeronautical engineer so I went to a big time university ( I was very good at math). At that time an 18 year old listen to his parent occasionally.  I hated it and quit after a year and a half. Worked construction and partied until Uncle Sam called in Jan 67. Spent a lot of time at Walter Reed and when I got out I went back to school and tried football again.  Blew my knee out so got serious about education. When thru in three years. Got the business degree and never really used it except for self satisfaction that I had it. Hope that makes sense. I worked my ass off, started a service bureau business doing work for the publishing industry. College was more to show me I could do it, not to give me anything else. I believe kids today just expect too much without any idea they have to commit to hard work. They have to take a chance and put a lot of effort into sweat equity.  Maybe it's all our fault for wanting our kids to have it better than we did. Maybe it's our fault for not teaching our kids to respect the fact hard work does make for a better life more often than not. I'm not saying some people have had a hard time but still worked hard. I'm just saying hard work is better than saying I deserve a better life because I am. 

Sorry if this sounded like a selfish rant. 

[Frantz]

My brother is 3 years younger than me. A few years back he told me "when you dropped out of college I thought you were an idiot. But now I have a degree and think I wasted four years of my time and too much money." He's got a "decent" job at the state capital working for the state, but lives at home yet to save money. Typical millennial situation, though not a typical mindset, just stuck. We were really convinced growing up that if we went to college, everything else will fall into place. I remember in 9th grade guidance class (yep, we have classes in high school for guidance...) they had everyone stand up who wanted to go to college, and then had a percentage of us sit down to represent "drop out". I remember at the time thinking, no way that would be me (I said the same thing about the idea of joining the military too....). They really set today's youth up for failure by kicking the can of teaching how the world works down the road and hoping the pieces get picked up but some future boon in white collar work. It's simply unsustainable, and it's bad for the hobby! Folks my age don't get into the hobby because they are intimidated by a hood latch....

[trimacar]

One needs only to follow Mike Rowe of "Dirty Jobs" to understand the country's dysfunctional disconnect with the reality of manual labor.

 

I agree that not everyone should go to college, yet many parents seem to force that on their kids.  There is honor in skilled trades, yet it's not appreciated.  We have a local trade school, but it's just a side note to other local educational institutions, and has a very limited budget.

 

Our son has a friend who graduated high school, took classes, apprenticed as an electrician, and is now making a very good living.  This fellow's parents are both highly educated, but were smart enough to know that, though the son is smart, college wasn't for him.

 

College worked for me, but it doesn't work for everyone.  It took fore years butt I are an engrinear because of college.  Geaux Tigers!

 

http://profoundlydisconnected.com/foundation/   

Edited June 27, 2017 by trimacar (see edit history)

[46 woodie]

Nick brings up a great point. Don't get me wrong, an education is a great thing, BUT. Not everyone needs a college education and let's face it some people just do not belong in higher education.  As Nick states, there are needs for skilled workers in several trades. I hear and read about young people leaving college with $200,000 in student loans with no prospect of a job. I think peer pressure forces some to go to college, rather than tell their friends that they are opting for a trade school. I know plumbers and electricians that are making very good money. 

[auburnseeker]

I graduated top of my class with the highest average.  Never went to college afterwards.  My parents surprisingly didn't push it either.  I'm not doing too bad at this point.  Of course I worked at a marina during and after school , worked my way up from the docks to the shop and eventually light mechanic, then went into the construction field as a carpenter and again worked my way up until I started my own business,  did that until i moved to be with my wife and started a parts business from a few boxes of parts and a parts car I bought for 350.00. 

A lot of luck was probably involved, but as mentioned Hard work put you over the top.  When you do the work others won't you get paid very well.  

My wife went to 4 years of college at a fancy university and never used her degree afterwards.  She waitresses.  I just scratch my head but appreciate the hard work she puts in the 3 nights a week she works and brings home a lot more than a lot of other educated Professionals. 

I don't need a prestigious title or degree.  I'm quite happy with the number of zeros in my "paycheck".  

We also found out with the last recession that even those well educated positions that seemed like a nice ride to retirement got terminated at an alarming rate.  There is very little job security today so I prefer to be self employed and have the ability to morph my profession as the market changes. 

Best part of all.  No college debt.  You can't beat on the job, hands on, training and the school of hard knocks, as well as murphy's law, to teach you how things really are and work.

[46 woodie]

Speaking of college tuition, the latest crock in New York State is FREE college tuition. NO, NO, NO, it's not FREE. The professors get paid, the classrooms are heated and cooled, the grounds are maintained and it all costs money. It's not FREE, it's TAXPAYER paid tuition!!!

[capngrog]

1 hour ago, 46 woodie said:

Speaking of college tuition, the latest crock in New York State is FREE college tuition. NO, NO, NO, it's not FREE. The professors get paid, the classrooms are heated and cooled, the grounds are maintained and it all costs money. It's not FREE, it's TAXPAYER paid tuition!!!

 

It's free if you don't pay taxes!

 

Cheers,

Grog