RobsPages

We WERE going to keep this blog updated, but that whole life thing got in the way…

Let’s see where to start?  Thai has been a bit of a pain lately, but for the most part,  I can’t complain.  Case in point - he is now lying on the floor in the office next to me.  Six months ago, I was dreaming of the day he’d be able to do that.  He is still very much a scaredy dog, but we know how to handle it.  Something (I think a cat) freaked him out yesterday when I was taking him out to do business and he got out of his collar and ran away from me.   He didn’t go very far and I was eventually able to lure him back home with a stick.  Ah, that reminds me - poem brake!

Oh woe is me

My stick is gone

Oh whatever

Have I done wrong

I loved that stick

I’d chomp all day

But now those meanies

Took it away

Goodbye great stick

I only hope

We’ll meet again.

Oh look - chew rope!

Needless stay, that dog loves sticks.

Let’s see what else - much to Rob’s dismay, we have decided to sell his beloved Subaru to save money.  It’s a harsh lesson in priorities.  It’s getting worse before it can better, but we are slowly learning how to manage our money like grown-ups.  And with $4.00/gallon gas (actually $3.93 at the Turkey Hill in Gap), we could all use a little refresher on course on budgeting (check out ynab.com)

We are both excited to finally have the left side of our house - the side we spend the least amount of time in - fully furnished.  That would be the dining room and formal living room.  They look great though (if I do say so myself) and when we finally do have people over, I’m sure they will enjoy it.  For now, Thai likes running around (and hiding behind) all of the furniture.

As for me, I’m trying to enjoy my summer while wrestling with the reality that I am up for tenure in two years.  So that has motivated me to try to get some publications out this summer.  My goal is 4.  I have 1 so far.  We’ll see how that goes.

Time for the weekend!

There is this really great dog toy called a Buster Cube which is sort of a puzzle for puppies. We bought one for Thai, filled it with the entire contents of his dinner and waited patiently (ok, maybe not-so-patiently) and watched as he grew increasingly hungry and frustrated.

The buster cube is a shaped like a large die (as in dice) with a center tunnel for food to fall out of the inside. All around the rube on the inside is a spiral tunnel for the food to fill, so as your dog spins the slightly rounded cube, more food head to the opening of the tunnel.

Round One went squarely to Buster. Thai basically gave up and took several punches and hit the floor for a ten count. He nudged it with his nose to no avail, clawed at it, then barked at it a bit. Then he stormed off to his crate and started looking for any trace of a morsel he may have forgotten earlier.

We tried getting him back into the game, but less than half of his found was dispensed and less than 10% of that was from Thai’s effort.

I, for one, want a rematch. Mostly because I paid for the toy and its really the only way Thai will be able to eat his dinner at the same time as us at this point in his puppy hood.

You would think at 45lbs, the Thai “The Black Lab” Retriever would have TKO’d the feather-weight Buster Cube. Maybe next round.

Rob

I’m a pretty liberal guy but I have this annoying habit of arguing to death the overwhelming “information” on global warming. This infuriates Jen to no end because, even though she is more conservative than I am, she fully believes in a majority of the global warming press.

This about sums up my cynicism:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/

Basically, I agree that we should find alternatives to fossil fuels and do everything in our power to reduce emissions. But I still have a hard time believing that any climate change we are currently experiencing is due to contemporary causes (industrial revolution pollution all the way up to HumVees in the high speed lanes). In the history of the Earth, our industrialization is a small spec on the timeline. The events we are experiencing were, in my opinion, set into motion long before we humans crawled around Europe.

The fact of the matter is that the Earth is going to keep on changing with or without us and its time for us to evolve into less of a parasite to the planet or find another planet.

Rob

Wow. I had to clear cobwebs off of the screen to get at the posting tool. Sorry it took so long to get a new post up. We’ve been busy with various things and running this way and that.

This past weekend, Jen and I celebrated our 2nd anniversary. Granted we’ve been together significantly longer than that, but people rarely ask “how long have you been together?” It’s always “how long have you been married.” Apparently, you can spend you’re entire adult life with someone and then 1 year after you make it legally binding you’re still fair game to be written off as newlyweds.

To celebrate our second year of being legally bound to each other we went on a clothes shopping bender to the outlet stores in Lancaster. Thirty minutes away isn’t far enough. We will be going back very soon, I would imagine. We only went over budget by 33% but hey… we saved a ton.

We also went out to dinner at an upscale, although I wouldn’t call it fancy, restaurant. The staff is well dressed and courteous as were the other patrons. The prices were acceptably higher than the family place we sometimes visit, and the food was excellent. We ordered a “Caesar Salad for two” which gets prepared table-side. How does one “prepare” a salad you ask? They make the dressing in the salad bowl, to your taste, right next to the table. It was ridiculously good. “Best Caesar salad I’ve ever had” I said as Jen points out, “They do that at the Ritz, too.” So there we are, a touch of Boston (albeit one I never experienced but I’ll take Jen’s word for it) in the East Nowhere, PA.

We started investing this week. It would seem like an odd time to jump into the stock market, what with every news report signaling doom and gloom thanks to mortgage fraud and lazy banks. I am happy to report that our initial investment of $96 has grown a whopping $2.40 since Tuesday. We’re following a plan, two one extent or another, detailed in this MSN Money article. It leans heavily on the ideas of diversification (having your money spread out so no one bad day at the races tanks your savings) and dollar-cost-averaging. Dollar-cost-averaging means taking a longer term view on investing and continually adding to your investment on a regular basis like a savings account. The averaging bit comes into play when you look at the prices at which you buy each bit of stock. For example, say you buy 1 share at $10 one week, the then a second share at $15 the next week. Well those two shares cost you $12.50 each (the average) and thats the measure by which you compare your gains.

We’ve only bought 1 share of one index fund (more on what that is later) but in future months we’ll add additional index funds at a rate of one a month until we have 5. Then we’ll contribute $100 each month two which ever of the 5 is the cheapest at the time. Doing this for the next several years can (legalize for “should, but don’t bet the farm on it bucko”) grow significantly faster than a savings account.

So what’s an index fund? Well, there are thousands of stocks out there and you’d go batty trying to track even a fraction of them all individually. So, there are indexes which track large groups of them and people watch those. When you hear about the DOW Jones Industrial average (or the DOW), the Standard & Poor’s 500, the Wilshire 5000, or the NASDAQ, they’re talking about those indexes. Index funds are similar to mutual funds in that lots of people pool their cash in order to buy stock they normally can’t afford themselves. The difference is, that instead of having 1 or 2 people manage the fund and decide what stock to buy/sell, Index funds try to match the Index they are based on. Now, they can’t afford to copy an Index dollar for dollar, so they scale it down and try to match closely percent for percent. Say Microsoft stock made up 10% of the S&P 500. An index fund which tracked the S&P would then try to have Microsoft stock make up 10% of its value as well.

So far, we bought 1 and a fraction of 1 share of a fund that tries to match the DOW. Next month we’ll add another index. And so on and so forth until we’re bazillionaires.

At $100 a month that could take some time.

Rob

In an earlier post I promised names and excerpts from good dealers and bad. Here is where I make good on that.

The one who got the sale:
Bill Monhollan Jr. at Raggerty Subaru in Newtown Square, PA
Bill was the first dealer to give me a price below invoice and not only that, he detailed where it came from. He was also patient enough to deal with repeated emails over the course of the week even when it appeared the deal would not be completed. For this, and the great effort he put in at the 11th hour to get everything in order, Bill won the sale.

The Contenders
Mike Connolly and Deb Brewster at Planet Subaru in Hanover, MA
Deb and Mike offered the most transparency of any dealer I contacted. They were clear, they were aggressive with their pricing and calm, cool and collected in every other respect. Upon request, I was furnished with detailed out-the-door prices on all of the cars they had on the lot which met my request and every price was the lowest I had seen. No one touched them on pricing and they seemed like the nicest people. Unfortunately it became clear that the Eclipse was going to have to be sacrificed as a trade-in and I had doubts it would make it to Hanover in the same number of pieces it had left PA.

Ed Maguire at Matt Slap Subaru in Newark, DE
Like Bill, Ed was straight to the point. He gave his best price on the cars he had on the and made himself available for questions. He also explained where his prices came from and what limits were on those prices (rebate expirations, optional equipment, etc.). If Bill didn’t match Ed’s price and openness, Ed would have made the sale.

The Losers
It occurs to me that publicly defaming dealers who just don’t “get it” might open me up to some sort of legal trouble. So with that in mind, stick to the top 3 guys above and enjoy the following quotes when talking to other dealers:

Hi Rob,

The 2005 Legacy GT is a Limited, 5 Speed, with Leather, Moonroof, 6 CD
Changer, Auto Climate Control, and Spoiler. It has 46k miles on it. It
also qualifies for Subaru’s Certified Pre-Owned Program. It is a one owner
vehicle, traded to us on a new Cadillac. The listed price is $21,998, but
we can offer it to you for a Special Discounted price of $20,476!! (price
does not include tax, fees, or Certified Warranty).

Hi Rob,

Thank you for contacting ********** Subaru and for inquiring about the 2008
Subaru Legacy GT Limited sedan. My internet sale price on the vehicle
with a suggested retail price of $29,371 is $28,371.
___________________

********,

Thank you for your response. I have already received a quote for $26k from another dealer.

Rob
__________________
Hi Rob,

Thank you for your reply.

You got a quote on that car for $1400 under invoice!?!? Wow!!! Sorry, but I can’t match that offer.

If it doesn’t work out, let me know.

Hello Rob,

Unfortunately, all the GT models that I currently have in stock have the Automatic Transmission. If I were able to locate a Manual Transmission version, I would sell the car to you for $250 over dealers invoice less the $750 incentive. The typical MSRP on these vehicles would be around $29,500 with selling price around $27,300 after the rebate.

As a side note - in phone conversations and our 1 in-person visit to a dealer before purchasing, I was misquoted the invoice price and MSRP almost every time. Most of the dealers gave me the base invoice price of the car with an automatic transmission which is about a grand more than the manual. You may think that speaking face-to-face or even on the phone dealers would be less likely to try an pull something than via email, but I have found that it is quite the opposite.

On used cars, dealers were invariably ignorant of the current stock available outside of a 10-15 mile range and their pricing reflects this. The gentleman who quoted a discounted price of $20k for a 2005 with 40,000 miles on it would be shocked to learn that there were 3 others within an hours drive for 1-2 thousand dollars less and with significantly lower mileage.

In short, knowing your numbers and being able to verify and feed them back to the salesman is an invaluable tool.

Rob’s adventure’s in finding a new car, from my perspective:

Given that it wouldn’t be my car, I just saw it all the way through as another car payment.  What can we afford?  What’s our out-the door price?  It was not a visceral experience for me as Rob has described; it was a purely cognitive one based on finances.

I did, in the end, concede to paying a little bit more per month that I had originally quoted as our “magic number” but Rob has promised to eat PB & J for lunch for the next 6 years AND this little bit more is for a fabulous new car that we got an EXCELLENT deal on.  So I’m happy.  And I’m happy Rob’s happy b/c his crankiness was really trying my patience.

I also want to point out how taking delivery on the car was completely hassle-free.  We went into the dealership for the first time knowing exactly what we wanted, exactly what we were going to pay for it, and how we were going to pay for it.  There was no negotiating (that was already done via email) and no uncomfortable wait on the financing numbers (we had a loan with a great interest rate all ready in our back pockets).  We had the upper hand, as it should be in the car buying process.  Our salesman was frantically running around for us so we could take delivery that night as we sat quietly (well, *I* was quiet anyway) and drank the free water.

Here is my view of the car buying process:  You are a consumer and you WANT to buy a car.  They are the salespeople and the NEED to sell it.  The good salespeople recognize this and cater to you.  Bad salespeople ignore this and try to take advantage of you by saying things like”We’ll get MSRP for this vehicle” and “You want a stick shift?  That’s really hard to come by.”  Walk away (or hang up on these people).  They do not deserve your time.

I am really proud of Rob for the following phone conversation with a salesman named Bob:

Rob:  What is your best price for this vehicle?

Bob: (some outrageous number)

Rob:  Well that would be why you still have it, wouldn’t it Bob?  I have quotes from 2 other dealerships for (some number that is much more reasonable).

Bob: (Some number that is much more reasonable)??? How did they come up with that?

Rob:  I’ll tell you how they came up with that.  (Goes on to explain: invoice is $X0,000, minus the current rebate, minus some for just wanting my business.)

Bob:  Well..uh (not really expecting an answer to his question b/c he thought Rob pulled his reasonable # out of his you know where)…sounds like you should take that deal then.

Rob:  Yes, it sounds like I should Bob.

The sad thing is that Bob probably got his #.  Don’t be that person.

Now that it’s all done, I can enjoy the fact that my husband has a fancy new car that supposedly has a lot of horsepower, AWD, and something called a “Sport Sharp” mode.  And my favorite:  heated seats.

It’s a done deal! We now have a gorgeous new 2008 Subaru Legacy GT Limited. I will post pictures soon.

We couldn’t have gotten it at all if we hadn’t done the steps that follow. In the end, I got it for a price I could stomach and more importantly, it’s a price Jen can stomach too (albeit after some antacids). To top it off, we had absolutely 0 troubles, pressure or hassle at the dealership.

That last bit is a little misleading. In reality, I front-loaded all of the hassle. I exchanged emails with dealer representatives all over the east coast for about a week and a half.

Financing
I qualified for a new car loan through LendingTree.com which resulted in a pretty competitive rate from RoadLoans (RoadLoans.com). I was able to bring that to the dealer as a failsafe in case they either couldn’t beat the terms or finance me at all. It turns out they were narrowly able to beat the loan I walked in with so I went with them. The dealer is happy it doesn’t lose that extra bit of revenue and I’m happy I got an extra quarter-point lower Interest rate.

Selecting the car
I love car research. I could read model descriptions and head to head match-ups between similar models all day. Doing this ahead of time and getting behind the wheel of your top 3-5 contenders will allow you to continue the rest of your car shopping without sitting in a show room (until you are ready to finalize your purchase at least).

Consumer Reports, Edmunds.com, Cars.com, MotorTrend.com, and several others have great ‘find a car for my needs’ type tools. I pretty much new who the contenders would be going into this but without those tools, I would have never considered the Legacy GT and that would have been tragic. So really know your options before heading out to test drive.

Once you have driven and hopefully fallen in love with a particular make, model and option package you are ready to start thinking about how much to pay for it.

Some tip pages will likely tell you to set a price range according to your budget then look at cars in that range. As intelligent and doctrine-worthy that sentiment may be, car buying is, for many people, an emotional and visceral experience. Decide what you want to get from your new car. I this phase remember that you are likely making at least a 5 year commitment to this vehicle and will have a monthly reminder of what you are sacrificing in order to do so. Be realistic about what you are willing to forgo in order to save $10, $50 or $100 on your car payment (do I really need an air conditioner… it saves me $2.50…). Also consider the next pricing section while narrowing the field. Jen and I drove away from the dealership having paid not only below MSRP but below even the invoice price.

Lastly, before contacting dealers use AutoTrader.com to search vehicle inventory to see who has your car already on the lot. This narrows the extremely wide range of dealers down to a manageable number and keeps you from wasting time and money on a dealer who has to spend money to acquire a vehicle for you. In some situations, a local dealer may be able to get a hard-to-find car and option combination, but be expected to pay a premium for that service. Dealers also seem more willing to deeply discount vehicles that are already on the lot. The longer they have been on the lot, the better for you in the case of new cars. Dealers pay for cars on a mortgage and make payments for every month it sits on their lot.

Pricing
As for the price, I had email exchanges with several dealerships within a 300 mile radius. Why 300 miles? Between family and friends, we would be able to combine the car-pickup trip from any of the further dealers with at least one or two social visits. For the most part, Auto dealerships are local businesses run by neighborhood people and cater to the same families and the occasional walk-in and live happily ever after. Some dealers have brought on one or two additional sales folks to work the email requests for quotes and such. Some dealers are better at this than others and you mileage may vary. In the end, I went with the first dealer to provide a lower-than-invoice price and a breakdown of where that price came from and they happened to be only 30 miles away from home. Two dealers beat his price, but would have required traveling. If more potential buyers showed an interest in the Eclipse I was selling, I would have waited to sell that then made the purchase at the lowest priced dealer.

Assuming you already have a car in mind, step 1 in pricing the vehicle is to visit Edmunds.com and find the invoice price. The Edmunds True Market Value figure is good for setting your expectations, but the invoice price is where you want to start your negotiations.

Step two is to gather incentive information. Check the manufacturer’s web site to get the details on any incentives that may be running at the time. Once you know what is currently being offered, try to get a sense of what the manufacturer has done historically for incentives. One unexpectedly useful tool was Archive.org which takes snapshots of popular websites at different intervals and allows people to see the old version. I used that capability to see what rebates and financing deals had been offered in the past few months although it could not tell me the immediate previous month. For that I used the cached copy of Edmunds’ incentives page from Google.com’s search results.

Next, run a Google search for Dealer Holdbacks. Holdbacks are a percentage of the invoice price which the dealer paid but will receive back from the manufacturer once they sell the vehicle. The amount varies by manufacturer and by region. The percentages typically range from 0-3% of the invoice. The reason you want to have this information is quite simply to punish abusive dealers. You will most likely not use this figure to factor your price. If nothing else, it allows you to justify (to yourself as well as the dealer) your below-invoice pricing. You now have in your possession the amount of profit the dealer will make on this sale if you buy at invoice. If an unscrupulous dealer says ‘Hey, I’m not making any money on this…’ you will know better. Unless of course they forfeit the chargeback in their pricing at which point you know you have an eager dealer.

So, you take your invoice, add any additional options or equipment and then subtract the incentives (rebates or cash-back offers) and that is what you should expect to see in your emails from smart dealers. Some will go lower, some will go slightly higher. Anyone who quotes you MSRP is immediately out of the game.

When responding to an offer with a counter offer - include how you arrived at that number. This helps the eager dealer at the other end justify the price to his/her sales manager who probably sees Internet leads as a losing proposition already. If they reject your offer they may or may not provide an explanation for the rejection which you can then incorporate into your next offer to another dealer.

Other things to consider
Aside from price, the vehicle’s availability and your financing situation there are other less tangible points to consider. Many dealers offer free or otherwise bundled services with the vehicle which increase its value for you. One dealer for example offers free oil changes for the entire time you on the vehicle. Others guarantee the availability of a free loaner car for maintenance items which take a while. The level of personalized customer service cannot be overlooked. The ability to get in touch with someone who genuinely wants to help you can be priceless. So even if a dealer may have the best price and be close by, also consider how friendly the staff has been to you in the process of purchasing the car.

Lastly, enjoy the car.

Jen has been through an excruciating week of me whining incessantly over car shopping. Relief arrived with the mail on Saturday in the form of the final Harry Potter book. That should hold my attention until the current crop of Subaru incentives expire on Tuesday. The August incentives should kick in the following Monday and hopefully there will be a juicy rebate on 08s.

My parents were convinced I would have bought something by now, but I am stretching a bit to try to get this car. My view is, if Jen and I are going to take on another car payment, the vehicle has to be perfect. My quest for the perfect vehicle/price combination has frustrated everyone around me (even the dog) and I am seriously contemplating just buying a Honda Civic to get the ordeal over with.

The story would be quite different if there was more interest in the Eclipse, however after a week on the market I have received a discouraging email and a single, barely intelligible phone call. If the Eclipse sells for a decent price, I can stop searching in vain for someone to list a used Legacy GT with some sanity, and tell one of the patient sales folks I have been emailing to gas up an 08 for me.

I took comfort this past week in knowing with every fiber of my being that if all other attempts to locate a great deal on a used 05 Legacy GT with a manual transmission failed, I could call the dealer Jen and I visited last Saturday and buy that car. I was so certain that the car was absurdly priced that interest in it would be nil and after a hard week of waiting the dealer would acquiesce to my demands. Besides, even if they sold the one I drove, they had another with more miles at another location down the road. Surely one of these vehicles would last the week and I could smack this particular dealer around on price and get the ‘good deal’ I think we deserve after their strong arm tactics last week.

As you no doubt have guessed, both vehicles have gone on to good homes. The one I drove left the lot forever on Wednesday and the one I was counting on as a backup narrowly missed the weekend. Several other leads had dried up by Saturday.

A new 2007 that was priced very aggressively (in a good way) by a dealer in MA went on Friday evening. A used one they received mid-week was actually priced higher than the one that had never left the lot.

There are other leads around the country, but none worth traveling for just yet.

Here’s to hoping I find a car Jen and I can both live with, while Jen still lets me live with her.

Rob

My ears perk up when people start talking about buying a new car or even just thinking about it. “What are you looking for? How much do you think you want to spend? New or used? Do you drive stick?”

So this past week I have been excited at the prospect of purchasing my new car. I wasted thousands of brain cycles on exactly which makes and models to look at and then we went and test drove 2 of the more convenient ones and one not-so-convenient. Turns out the not-so-convenient one is it.

The make and model that is.

That particular vehicle is entirely unacceptable for reasons only making sense to me, mostly because the salesman sicked his sales manager on us, but the color wasn’t exactly right and the price was absurd.

So for the past 4 days, I have been scouring the Internet looking for the best possible price and honest, transparent dealers. Much to my surprise, I found a couple. But only a couple.

I have been in contact with the Internet sales departments of at least 16 dealers in the past 4 days and that number will increase until my car sells and I make a purchase.

Once that is done, I will provide the names and numbers of the guilty, copies of emails with the good the bad and the indifferent and other nuggets I learned along the way.

Stay tuned.
Rob

P.S.: For those who are interested, my Eclipse is posted for sale on Craigslist, Cars.com and Autotrader.com