This article is the final part of a series on how to get a great deal on a new car. Part I of the series focused on research and selection. Part II helped you determine how much you could afford, determining how much you’ll pay, and getting some initial deals either over the phone or on email. This article, will provide you with valuable information on how to deal with the sales staff, finance team and drive your new car home.
Photo by: Paul Mannix
One of the key things you can do to save money is create and follow a budget. I’ve heard Dave Ramsey say many times that when you start following a budget, it’s like getting a raise. I’ve found that to be very true. When you start tracking and pruning your expenses, you find money that you were previously just blowing.
One of the many reasons people don’t budget is because they think budgeting is too complicated. It really isn’t, but I can fully understand why people think this. I struggled with maintaining a monthly budget for most of my life.
Photo by: Indy Kethdy
While driving home this afternoon, this song came on the radio. I think it has really powerful message about how we should live life. I particularly like one part that says: “And it’s not what you did, It’s how you live“.
Here are the lyrics to “Turn up the music” by Point of Grace. You can watch the video here.
Verse 1:
Wake up to the sunlight
With your windows open
Don’t hold in your anger or leave things unspoken
Wear your red dress
Use your good dishes
Make a big mess and make lots of wishes
Have what you want
But want what you have
And don’t spend your life lookin’ back
Photo by: Mini OzzY
This is a guest post by Jason Anderson. Jason is a web designer and entrepreneur who takes a sideways look at culture, politics, and anything else that comes up on his blog, The Cynical Christian.
Money is a little like love in the way that the pursuit of it can make otherwise shrewd people do some shockingly stupid things. We all know people (or maybe we are people) who are responsible citizens, competent business people, good parents, and yet manage to get involved in the most cockamamie moneymaking scams.
Sure wish my aquarium looked like this!
For those of you wondering where the Friday Gathering is, well here you go. Better late than never right? Keeping this addition short and sweet so here’s the links:
In part one of this series I focused on research and model selection a key step in the process of getting a great deal on a new car. Research involved selecting the appropriate make and models, researching those using services like Edmunds.com, and getting your financing taken care of in advance and independent of the dealership.
This article, the second part of the series, will outline the next steps including: deciding how much you can afford, setting a cap on how much you will pay, and obtaining competitor price information.
The stock market continues to be a concern with many people and as a result, one of the most popular search engine queries I get here on Gather Little by Little is “My 401k is losing money. What should I do?”
To be forthright, investing is not my area of expertise, and I prefer to let other professionals manage my investments in the form of mutual funds and my employer’s 401k program. I have done enough reading and research though to know a few key things about retirement accounts and 401k programs in particular.
I’ve been reading and thinking a lot on topic Gazelle Intensity from Dave Ramsey lately. There has been quit a bit of discussion about the topic on various personal finance blogs. I am very personally interested in the various aspects of it and have lots of questions, such as:Â How realistic is it? What exactly does “bobbing and weaving” really mean? Should you take “gazelle intensity vacations“? How many people consider themselves gazelle intense and what exactly does it mean to them? The list of questions I have goes on, but strange or not, I am pretty fascinated with the concept. I have even been considering the concepts outside of the personal finance world and trying to apply them to my IT management job in the real world.
Blogging is like eating potato chips or Doritos, you can’t write on just one, you have to have at least two or more. Over the past few weeks, I have been secretly working on a new blog about saltwater aquariums. I currently have two articles posted and plan to post one or two a week ongoing. I’ve worked really hard to give the blog an aquarium and aquatic look and feel and really hope I pulled it off. Saltwater Blogger.net will be my outlet for sharing information about the lessons I’ve learned in my little saltwater aquarium adventure.
Personally, I haven’t been a huge fan of coupons. It’s not that they won’t save you money, they definitely will. We just don’t like taking the time to sift through them, clip them out, file them, and then try to use them when grocery shopping. In particular I just haven’t found a good method of organizing and finding them when we need them. Now that isn’t to say we don’t use them at all, just to say that we don’t use them very frequently.
