Car Insurance

“Just pay what the sticker says” has become a cultural phenomenon in America, according to one financial advisor, and he claims it is costing Americans a lot of money.

Buying big bargains is one of a series of steps advocated by Dave Ramsey, a financial counselor, author and host of a national radio program on money and finances.

“If you got a good buy, some folks think someone else was harmed,” Ramsey said. “Yet, in virtually every other culture other than America, people negotiate the price of nearly everything.”

His philosophy is part of a process he calls a Total Money Makeover. According to Ramsey, part of getting and keeping money is spending money wisely, which he claims most people don’t know how to do.

“We get in our ‘fleeced’ car, put credit card-gas in it, drive it to the mall on a bond-financed highway, go into the mall and buy something on an 18-percent credit card, and think we got a bargain because it said ’sale’ on it,” he declared.

“Most people are too embarrassed to negotiate a better price, but I would rather be embarrassed than broke,” claims Ramsey. “Yet, they will go to a flea market or garage sale and think negotiating a better price is perfectly normal.”

Ramsey promotes several techniques, in addition to negotiating the price of virtually everything, in order to get the best bargains.

“Several studies of multi-millionaires shows they have one major personality characteristic in common: integrity,” explained Ramsey. “It is surprising to have to say that, but don’t lie! Television has told you J.R. Ewing is how business is done, and we believed that.”

“We have a saying around our business, ‘Life is too short to deal with people who lie. You can’t keep up with them’,” he said. “I don’t know where they are going, and it doesn’t matter how good the deal is because it is all a lie.”

“What that means is, if you are selling your car and you know the transmission is bad, you had better say something, and not just hope it doesn’t slip during the test drive,” he explained.

Practicing personal integrity is a key part of developing a win-win situation with each other, according to the author.

The power of cash

“It has immediacy; it says it’s a lock; it says the deal is closed, if I take your bargain,” he said. That’s the power of cash, according to Ramsey. “It says I don’t have to check with my bank on Monday, or get somebody’s permission.”

“When you get $100 bills out, you get everyone’s attention,” he continued. “It’s emotional, and people remember it.”

“After you’ve shown you are serious and the merchant won’t change the price, you use the words every merchant is terrified to hear: ‘I bet your competitor can sell it for that price’,” he continued. “When you don’t have walk-away power, you become salesman-bait. When you understand and use that emotional distance, you win.”

Patience

“Learn the power of not talking,” he explained. “Just look interested, or ask a question and shut up.”

“In our busy, ‘go-go’ society, people are not ready to handle silence,” he continued. “I’ve had salesmen lower their price and tell me things I didn’t know just by not saying anything, and listening to them.”

There are also several communication techniques Ramsey says will help buyers get a better deal.

“Learn to say ‘That’s not good enough’,” he said. “Ask for something else, even if it isn’t money.

“You may have to say, ‘That’s alright, we’ll get someone else to do that for us’ if they won’t give you the price or the product you want,” said Ramsey.

Control

“Don’t let it happen to you; it is being done to you all the time and you don’t know it,” he said. “I want you to learn to spend wisely by spending your money wisely,” he concluded.

On paper, the Tesla Roadster is the electric car that’s finally going to revolutionize transportation. I want to see it happen. I hope it happens. If Tesla wants to change the course of history, it has to change the mixed history of electric vehicle (EV) cars. It certainly attracted a wide range of celebrities and tech fans to the launch at its Signature One-Hundred event.

Tesla says it will ship its first Roadsters in mid-2007. The numbers are Corvette-like: 0 to 60 mph in 4 seconds, 250 miles between charges, and recharging in 3.5 hours. So says Tesla. The price however, is more Porsche than Corvette, with the Roadster estimated to sell for $80,000 to $120,000. People buying a Roadster are not clipping PriceChopper coupons.

The Roadster will employ a lithium-ion battery rather than lead acid, as used in most cars for starter motors, or nickel-metal hydride, used in most hybrids such as the Toyota Prius. To get the claimed 250 miles, rather than 60 to 100 miles from the previous iteration EVs, it will likely do what all other EVs do: charge the battery all the way up, to 100 percent, then run it all the way down to no charge.

And that, claims Toyota, is the recipe for short-life batteries. At a hybrid technology seminar this spring, Toyota and Lexus said it can get essentially life-of-the-car performance from hybrid batteries, meaning 10-plus years, if they only live in the middle 60 percent of their charge range. That’s easy to do when you’ve got a small gasoline or diesel engine that can go it alone should the batteries get down to 20 per cent charge. Treat rechargeable car batteries like laptop batteries and you’ll get a couple good years out of them — then you need to start thinking about a replacement, but for $2,500 a pop and more, not less than $250.

Electric vehicles get the best mileage when the passengers are uncomfortable. If you run the air conditioning in summer or the heater in winter you’re cutting into your driving range. Ditto for running 400-watt audio systems. Hills are tough on electric vehicles, too, unless you regenerate power the way hybrids do. Headlights after dark aren’t good for driving range.

Electric vehicles such as the General Motors EV1 of the 1990s failed because they were just too limited in usefulness for real people to buy. It might serve you fine driving 10 miles to the office, but not for weekend trips to the beach, let alone on vacations or college-search trips.

Drive it kids-to-carpool-to-mall-to-home and you’d probably have enough juice, but it might struggle the last couple miles and the lights would be dimming. A lot of them were either bought by the government or with government subsidies. An EV is not, despite what proponents say, a zero-emissions car, because you’re burning coal, oil, or natural gas somewhere to make the electrons that power your car. That said, it’s probably cleaner overall that a fossil-fuel vehicle.

We’ll have to see if Tesla fares better than its EV predecessors. Tech industry people aren’t superheroes, but they more than the traditional automakers tend not to be phased by seemingly insurmountable problems.

The nothing-is-impossible attitude is working in other areas. Eclipse Jet Co. is underwritten by other tech sector millionaires and if it takes off, literally, it’s going to rewrite the price/performance rules for small business jets. Mark Cuban is unlike anything else the NBA has ever seen. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is revolutionizing charitable giving. Car tech may be the next frontier for high-tech geniuses. And it’s not like the industry is completely different. They already know how to make software crash.

If you’re shopping for a new or used car, the Chicago Sun-Times has just made your task easier.
You’ll find hundreds of cars listed in the new Saturday/Sunday AutoTimes section, the largest selection of classified automotive ads in the Chicago area.

Each week, the new Saturday/Sunday AutoTimes will feature a new- car review by Auto Editor Dan Jedlicka.

Dan will continue to review a different new car in the Monday AutoTimes, plus offer his unique retrospective on classic cars of the past, letters from readers and other features you’ve come to rely on.

You can get a jump on your car shopping each weekend with the Sun- Times, where you’ll find Chicago’s biggest selection of automotive classified advertising in the new Saturday/Sunday AutoTimes.

After you check out the cupholders in the new car you’re shopping for, take a look inside the fuel-filler door.

There might be a surprise there that will cost you $3 or more every time you fill the tank.

A startling number of otherwise affordable new cars and trucks require or recommend premium gasoline, the fuel grade that often costs 20 cents a gallon more than regular.

It’s a cost many shoppers might overlook until the first time they refuel their new car, when it’s too late for second thoughts.

It’s an easy mistake to make. Most of us assume only high- powered exotic cars require premium, but some mainstream models do, too.

Twenty cents a gallon might not mean much to the architect in the $250,509 Ferrari 612 Scaglietti or the lawyer in the $169,900 Bentley Continental GT, but it’s a nasty shock to the college grad who stretched his or her budget to buy an $18,285 Chevrolet Cobalt SS, a $22,110 Toyota FJ Cruiser or a $24,000 Nissan Altima 3.5 SE, all of which require or recommend premium fuel.

The difference can add up to real money. Let’s run some numbers.

Consider the Ford Edge and Mazda CX-7, two cool-looking five- passenger SUVs with similar power, size and fuel economy. The 265- horsepower Edge runs on regular; the 244-horsepower CX-7 requires premium.

Assuming 1.25 18-gallon refuels a week and a 20-cent-per-gallon hit for premium, the CX-7 will cost about $20 a month more to run than the Edge.

Over 52 weeks, the difference amounts to about $240. That’s easily half a car payment, assuming you bought a base CX-7 with a $2,000 down payment. I used the payment calculator at Edmunds.com to estimate the monthly payment.

While some mainstream models like the CX-7 and FJ Cruiser require premium, you might be surprised by some of the upscale and performance cars that happily burn regular, including the turbocharged Saab 9-5 and the 300-horsepower Mustang GT convertible.

The Detroit-based automakers have caught their share of flak as fuel prices rose this year. They deserve credit, though, for generally avoiding the hidden cost hike of sneaking a “premium required” label onto apparently budget-minded models, and holding the line for regular fuel even where Cadillacs and Lincolns are concerned.