Personal finance: Strategy for slashing car expense: Buy low, sell high - billingsgazette.com
Personal finance: Strategy for slashing car expense: Buy low, sell high
Jeff Brown
PERSONAL FINANCE
Sometimes you meet someone who takes a rough idea and polishes it into an art form.
Meet Jim Williamson, an East Falls, Pa., pizza shop owner who has figured the best way to cut the costs of car ownership to the bare minimum.
In a recent column on this subject, I argued that the best approach is to buy a good used car and drive it to death, then get another one.
I relied on data from Kelley Blue Book, the car-valuation folks, that said the average car loses 65 percent of its value in its first five years.
Cars depreciate, or lose value, very fast in their first few years, but at a much slower pace in the latter ones.
So the idea is to let someone else take the big depreciation hit, then buy a car at a third of its original cost - while it still has two-thirds or three-quarters of its useful life ahead of it.
Williamson has refined the idea.
He buys a 5-year-old car. But instead of keeping it until it dies, he sells it two or three years later - often getting almost as much as he paid, while avoiding the higher maintenance costs of a car on its last legs.
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Jeff Brown
PERSONAL FINANCE
Sometimes you meet someone who takes a rough idea and polishes it into an art form.
Meet Jim Williamson, an East Falls, Pa., pizza shop owner who has figured the best way to cut the costs of car ownership to the bare minimum.
In a recent column on this subject, I argued that the best approach is to buy a good used car and drive it to death, then get another one.
I relied on data from Kelley Blue Book, the car-valuation folks, that said the average car loses 65 percent of its value in its first five years.
Cars depreciate, or lose value, very fast in their first few years, but at a much slower pace in the latter ones.
So the idea is to let someone else take the big depreciation hit, then buy a car at a third of its original cost - while it still has two-thirds or three-quarters of its useful life ahead of it.
Williamson has refined the idea.
He buys a 5-year-old car. But instead of keeping it until it dies, he sells it two or three years later - often getting almost as much as he paid, while avoiding the higher maintenance costs of a car on its last legs.
Thanksgiving Links
Thanksgiving Recipes
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Thanksgiving Quotes
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Turkey Recipes
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Thanksgiving Stories
Thanksgiving Stories - Thanksgiving Day - Holiday Stories - Stories for the Holidays
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