5 Tips for Buying a Certified Used Car from a Dealership

I grew up in the suburbs and was fortunate that my parents provided me with a vehicle once I became of driving age.  Due to a wild constellation of facts, I have a long list of cars in my driving history.  To wit (in order of appearance):

1984 Honda Prelude
2000 Toyota Corolla
2004 Toyota Camry
2002 Acura MDX
1999 Volkswagen Passat
2004 Volvo S80
2002 Volvo S40
2014 Toyota Prius V

The two Volvos were my foray into buying from private parties on Craigslist.  Given that I just bought the Prius yesterday, certified used from a dealership, I thought I'd share some tips on the car-buying experience and insights I've gained on the question of whether to buy from a dealer vs. private party.

If buying from a dealer:

1. Break your visit up into different days. Even in the nicest, most consumer-friendly and patient of dealerships, the fact is, a dealership is a car store, and they do everything in their power to make buying the car appealing.  And by "appealing," I also mean "easier than resisting" and "a way to get the torture over with."  It can take a long time to look at cars and arrive at a reasonable price (it took us 6 hours, but we also had to feed a baby and change a diaper).  Once you've gotten to that point, stop. Cool off.  Return in a few days when you are fresh to sign paperwork (took another 2 hours).
2. Sign the stuff YOU want to know about 1st, before you get weary and tired.  I would suggest looking at the warranty documents 1st, making sure all pages are in place, and signing those.  Next, the loan document.  There will be a GIANT stack of documents to sign.  Remember, you have the power, and until the loan document is signed, you hold the power.  Why not sign the documents in the order you would like to?  There is a "sales order"-looking document that you will have to sign.  I'm inclined to say this document is not binding.  Take a look at the language.  I will scan and upload images of the documents I was faced with to help guide you through this process.  Some documents are just there to tire you out or make you think you have reached the point of no return.
3. Bring a calculator, pen, a pad of paper, and some post-its.  They're asking you to spend 1000s of dollars.  There's no shame in wanting the terms laid out, taking time to calculate things, etc.  They're doing all of that in their office--why shouldn't you be able to, as well? 
4. Bring snacks, take breaks, and remember you have the power, even when you are in the Finance person's office.  She will be intimidating (maybe in a friendly way), talk like you've already purchased the car, and make it incumbent upon YOU to stop the train, inconvenience her, make a scene, and say no.  SAY NO.  Say you need time.  Walk away.  She's the real salesperson in the dealership.  And a formidable one.  They make it seem like they're doing you a favor by selling you a car.  You gotta be kidding me!  This is the one store I know of where they bully you into buying things.
5. Don't get too excited about the warranties.  Just don't.  Don't count on them when you buy the car and don't buy any extras.  

Overall, the experience was mildly entertaining, very enlightening, incredibly exhausting, intimidating, and a little insulting to my intelligence.  I'm frugal, a savvy consumer, and have a formal background in reading fine print.  The dealership treated me politely.  Nonetheless, I left feeling a touch bullied by the Finance Manager.  I can only imagine how abused and taken advantage of your everyday buyer must feel, and even moreso if you are less empowered due to language ability, perceived naivete, etc.

Fresh off the dealership experience, I'd say I prefer a private party sale with a pre-purchase inspection from a mechanic I trust over a dealership sale almost any day.  Private party sales are more fun and don't leave you feeling like you just overpaid to participate in the consumer-financing-industrial complex.

The Onus of Owning

Some good stuff on downsizing going on in these minimalist, recession days.

The Uniform Project (super cool clothing experiment. Thanks to my sister Ruthie for letting me know about this when it started!)

Tiny Houses (as soon as I find a good plot of land!). Love this tiny house, too.

And of course, The New York Times is covering all of it.

I'm not the Times, but I think I have written a few times about my own ambivalence towards and feelings of being burdened by possessions. I hate them. I hate acquiring them, I hate living around them, and most of all, I hate schlepping them. Thankfully, because I've moved abodes and/or changed states at least every 12 months* for the past several 13 years, I have kept my number of large possessions to a minimum (damn you, sea green metal medical cabinet). And each time I move, I purge a little more.

Currently, my mega-burdens are paper, clothing, and toiletries. And interestingly, the burden part of the equation comes largely from all the acquisitions I made (or gifts I received) from childhood through college. Yes, I'm a recovering packrat, and with the luxury of a stable childhood home and my own bedroom, I have a lifetime's worth of toiletries, perfume, and hair styling products.

I'm working on scanning the paper into oblivion, and I've started shampooing with my hand soap and rubbing myself frequently with all the exfoliants, moisturizers, and healing oils, but I'm always going to want to be surrounded by clothes. It's not that I'm buying new attire--I just love digging through my existing collection.

I'm glad I have experience with living with a small wardrobe. From 2003-2004, I went on a self-induced clothing diet. I was living in Los Angeles with only the carry-on suitcase I'd flown there for the weekend with. I had a dress, 1 or 2 pairs of pants, 3 or 4 shirts, and a t-shirt and shorts for working out. Jewelry consisted of two rings. It was enough variety that I wasn't wearing the same thing every single day, but I remember the excitement and fulfillment I felt when I returned to North Carolina and had full access to my entire wardrobe. I am winnowing my clothing habits down in one important way, though--quality over quantity.

I get inspired by reminding myself that I want my own tiny little house some day. Or, of course, a vintage Airstream. Could it be that the real estate one aspires to guides their life choices? E.g., picket-fenced house leads to need of husband to fit in which leads to need to birth kids to fit in which leads to need for new washer/dryer to fit in which leads to need to send daughter to ballet to fit in which leads to...

*Exception: from 2005-2007, I stayed in the same apartment for 2 years straight!

Awesome High School Teacher - Food, Land, and You

Article from the NY Times. Omg, I should really get started on my nonprofit project.

Learning What Food Looks Like Before It Goes Into the Package

By HANNAH WALLACE

Published: February 5, 2010

About 20 high school students stood behind the butcher counter, staring at a 160-pound piece of meat from a recently slaughtered cow.

“All of our meat comes from local farms, and we get it all whole,” said Tom Mylan, 33, one of three butchers at the Meat Hook, a new butcher shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, that buys its meat locally and prizes nose-to-tail eating. “We don’t just buy steaks or pork chops or whatever.”

“How much does the whole cow cost?” one boy in a white hoodie had asked moments before. Answer: about $3.25 a pound. “Do you slaughter here?” asked another. Short answer: no—most slaughterhouses are upstate. “What is chorizo?” asked a girl. Answer: a spicy Spanish sausage.

These curious students, all juniors and seniors at Automotive High School in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, are taking a class called “Food, Land, and You.” Introduced by Jenny Kessler, a teacher at the school, three years ago, this elective English course is a primer about food broadly defined — its social, political and economic aspects. While dozens of New York City public schools have edible gardens, or offer student-grown food on the cafeteria menu, Ms. Kessler’s class is unusual in the wider perspective it takes.

“Food justice is a huge issue,” Ms. Kessler, 31, said. “But we study and talk blatantly about it — who has access to this food and why.”

Ms. Kessler’s pupils study factory farming and corn subsidies, read articles by Michael Pollan and Wendell Berry and watch documentaries like “Food, Inc.,” a dark look at the nation’s industrialized food system. They also tend a 2,500-square-foot organic vegetable garden that borders their school, financing it with funds they raise and with support from the New York chapter of Slow Food U.S.A. In season, their plot teems with cucumbers, eggplant, okra, peas, red cabbage, spinach, tomatoes and many herbs. The teenagers can take the food home free, and they sell the rest at an after-school farm stand.

But the popularity of Ms. Kessler’s class — it is one of the most sought-after at the school, according to Mary Brouder, the principal — may be due to the frequent trips, like the one to the Meat Hook.

In the fall, for example, Ms. Kessler took her charges to the Queens County Farm Museum, where they collected eggs, worked with compost and helped clear garden beds. She also secured a stand for her students at the Union Square Greenmarket, where they ran cooking demonstrations, and she organized a volunteer stint for them at the Bowery Mission, where they made lunch for the homeless.

Twice a year, Ms. Kessler also takes her students to Hawthorne Valley Farm in Ghent, N.Y., where they make apple cider and apple pies from scratch, feed the pigs and sweep up cow manure. For many of these students, who hail from gritty neighborhoods like Bedford-Stuyvesant and East New York, that excursion marks their first visit to a farm.

Back at the Meat Hook, another butcher, Brent Young, 27, was displaying the tools of his trade.

“Ninety percent of our work is done with our knives, most importantly this five-inch European-style breaking knife,” Mr. Young said, pulling the tool out of his scabbard for all to see. He then pointed out the band saw (used for cutting through thick bones), the three-horsepower meat grinder (for sausages and ground beef) and a hand saw (for cutting through muscle and bone). When a student asked if there were ever any accidents, Mr. Mylan produced a chain-mail vest, which he said the butchers use “when we’re doing really serious work.”

“Sometimes,” he added, “the dense bone and hard muscle is not exactly where you thought it was and that knife will just come through and you can really hurt yourself.”

When it came time to sampling some raw meat — something these butchers do every day to ensure the meat is of high quality — the students hesitated.

“If it’s nasty, I’m not going to try it again,” said Denzel Conze, 18.

Ben Turley, 29, another of the Meat Hook butchers, cut a raw flatiron steak into thin slices, sprinkling each with some salt.

“It tastes like salty gummy bears,” Jamie Colon, 16, said after a bite of the meat.

Most of Ms. Kessler’s students live in “food deserts”—neighborhoods with lots of fast food but little fresh produce or other healthy fare. Automotive High School’s students are predominantly low income, too, with 75 percent of them qualifying for a free lunch, according to Ms. Brouder.

Though the students may not return to the Meat Hook to buy the homemade sausages ($10.99 a pound), or even the grass-fed beef ($6 a pound), that’s not really the point. “The purpose of going there is just for them to know it’s out there,” Ms. Kessler said. “It’s really hard to cement in their heads that there are other options to industrial food.”

Jobs for Me

The following is a list of jobs I think I could enjoy, in no particular order (culled from the results of a 5-minute quiz on The Princeton Review's website):

• set designer. coincidentally, i wrote a paper on this career option in 9th grade, much to the dismay of my uptight Advanced English teacher). but n.b. this would have to be for sets for projects with meaning because ultimately i couldn't stress out about where Gwen Stefani's video screen was.
  
• florist. would have to develop green thumb. but like the contribution to aesthetics this job would provide. plus, clear opportunity for own business and distinguish self from rest (competitive spirit satisfied).
• mediator. a little ho-hum, but easy transition from current job. plus, opportunity for own business. one-on-one counseling element satisfied and working on something with meaning/respected/non-frivolous.
• trial lawyer. i'm surprised at this one because i have recently realized i detest selling/persuading others (either you see the light or you don't). one-on-one counseling potential, respected work, but ho-hum.
• writer. yep. but enslaved or free agent?
• secretary. but too high stakes because your principal relies on you for everything.
  
• professor. but need to know too much? satisfies prestige, respectability, non-sell-out but not a sucker, get one-on-one counseling element and showmanship.
• nutritionist. but low on the rung--why not doctor. = respectability in question. one-on-one counseling/imparting knowledge satisfied. field of interest.
• fashion designer. yes. i'll take this to include jewelry. but uphill battle w/ $.
  
• cosmetologist. yes. i'll take this to include estheticians. one-on-one counseling. work of value. aesthetic-oriented. own business opportunity. potential to school everyone.
• comedian. yep. uphill battle w/ $.
  
• college administrator. yes. one-on-one counseling (if student services/residential related). academic environment = respectable.
  
• career counselor. yes. one-on-one counseling, imparting knowledge.
  
• artist. see fashion designer.
• antiques dealer. own business, specialized knowledge, public-oriented.
• actor. see comedian.
  

Tired and Feathered

Yowzers!

I recently moved, and for the first time in all the many times I've lived in NYC, I must furnish my living space from scratch.

It's been a struggle, to say the least. Furniture is expensive, so I definitely can't buy it all at once, and locating furniture and other home furnishings that are at once space-appropriate and consistent with my aesthetic goals compounds the difficulte. Not to mention the financial and physical challenge of hauling something to my apartment or being home Monday-Friday during the day to accept a delivery.

Aside: why do furniture stores for Manhattanites even sell full-sized couches and dining tables? Surely
# of shoebox apartments > # of properly proportioned apartments here, non?

Aaanyway, to add more financial insult to financial injury and more hassle to hassle, my existing possessions are deteriorating rapidly (see earlier post entitled "10-year replacement cycle"). Case in point: my down comforter. I woke up one chilly November morning to find my bed and person covered in loose feathers. Covered! Tarred and feathered, minus the tar. It was as if a gaggle of girls had taken over my bedroom under the cover of night and thrown the archetypal slumber party. I wonder how many secrets got whispered behind hands and into ears that night. I hope it was a lot, and I hope they were juicy because otherwise I'm suffering for nought.

Oh my god. It was such an utter desastre in my apartment and covered me so completely from head to toe in feathers that I had two, count 'em TWO strangers who saw me that morning inquire as to what on earth happened to me.

Ugh. Fortunately, today, I finally purchased a new comforter. Now, if I could just get my hands on a decent broom.

Barney Reloaded

I just made a wonderful discovery: a series of movies made by The White House from the perspective of Barney, one of Mr. President's Scottish Terriers. Briefly obsessed, I made it through the entire series.

My favorite by far is Barney Reloaded. In this caper, Barney is charged with a job to do, and oh, boy, does he do it! You would not believe the hi jinks our favorite canine pulls, but in the end, he is the boss!!

The only way to access these excellent films is through the kids' section of whitehouse.gov, which unfortunately has caused the entire oeuvre to exist in relative obscurity. In an effort to allow these movies to reach a broader audience, here is the link:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/barney/barney-bio.html

These movies are also the closest we may get to a reality show about life in The White House (unless, perhaps, finger-on-the-pulse Obama and the soon-to-be First Mom would like to change that, please), so for that reason alone, they are culturally relevant and required watching.

lossed

I'm all lost again, and I was unable to take any action in light thereof, so I gave myself a deadline of the end of March to gain clarity & take action (about 4 weeks). Then, with about 1 week left, I gave myself a 1-week extension to April 6th. Given the impending deadline, I need to spend some focused time contemplating myself and my future self this weekend.

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So I am organizing these three quotes/maxims in one place to keep me from losing further sight of things:

1. It doesn't matter where you are but what you're doing.
2. On moving: wherever you go, there you are. You have to be the panacea you wish to see in the world.
3. Bloom where you're planted.

The first two are courtesy of The Wise Messr. Alexander. The bloom notion is courtesy of Joel Osteen in Your Best Life Now discussing god (apparently), but widely applicable, I think.

The bloom notion elaborated:

I was walking in the woods one day when I came to a big, open field that was full of tall weeds. Everywhere I looked, all I could see were ugly, brown, dried-up weeds. But when I went a little farther down the path, I noticed one beautiful flower standing in the midst of all the weeds. It was so colorful, so vivid and, amazingly, it had blossomed right there in the midst of those drab, dreary weeds. You may live or work around a bunch of weeds, but don't let that stop you from blooming. Realize that your environment does not prevent you from being happy. Some people spend all their time trying to pull up all the weeds. Meanwhile, they miss much of their lives.

beefcake

What you are looking at is a disgustingly large number of cows at feeding time in a feed lot in CA. This picture accompanied the New York Times article mentioned below.
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All these years of not eating much meat for selfish reasons, and it turns out I was conserving energy for the world to boot! Also, reading this article reminds me that meat is for plebs. Ever the snob, I find myself wanting to avoid meat even more now.

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Excerpt from "Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler"*(NY Times)

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A SEA change in the consumption of a resource that Americans take for granted may be in store — something cheap, plentiful, widely enjoyed and a part of daily life. And it isn’t oil.
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It’s meat.
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The two commodities share a great deal: Like oil, meat is subsidized by the federal government. Like oil, meat is subject to accelerating demand as nations become wealthier, and this, in turn, sends prices higher. Finally — like oil — meat is something people are encouraged to consume less of, as the toll exacted by industrial production increases, and becomes increasingly visible.
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Global demand for meat has multiplied in recent years, encouraged by growing affluence and nourished by the proliferation of huge, confined animal feeding operations. These assembly-line meat factories consume enormous amounts of energy, pollute water supplies, generate significant greenhouse gases and require ever-increasing amounts of corn, soy and other grains, a dependency that has led to the destruction of vast swaths of the world’s tropical rain forests.
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Just this week, the president of Brazil announced emergency measures to halt the burning and cutting of the country’s rain forests for crop and grazing land. In the last five months alone, the government says, 1,250 square miles were lost.
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The world’s total meat supply was 71 million tons in 1961. In 2007, it was estimated to be 284 million tons. Per capita consumption has more than doubled over that period. (In the developing world, it rose twice as fast, doubling in the last 20 years.) World meat consumption is expected to double again by 2050, which one expert, Henning Steinfeld of the United Nations, says is resulting in a “relentless growth in livestock production.”
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Americans eat about the same amount of meat as we have for some time, about eight ounces a day, roughly twice the global average. At about 5 percent of the world’s population, we “process” (that is, grow and kill) nearly 10 billion animals a year, more than 15 percent of the world’s total.
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Growing meat (it’s hard to use the word “raising” when applied to animals in factory farms) uses so many resources that it’s a challenge to enumerate them all. But consider: an estimated 30 percent of the earth’s ice-free land is directly or indirectly involved in livestock production, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, which also estimates that livestock production generates nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases — more than transportation.
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To put the energy-using demand of meat production into easy-to-understand terms, Gidon Eshel, a geophysicist at the Bard Center, and Pamela A. Martin, an assistant professor of geophysics at the University of Chicago, calculated that if Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to the ultra-efficient Prius. Similarly, a study last year by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan estimated that 2.2 pounds of beef is responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average European car every 155 miles, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days.
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Grain, meat and even energy are roped together in a way that could have dire results. More meat means a corresponding increase in demand for feed, especially corn and soy, which some experts say will contribute to higher prices.
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This will be inconvenient for citizens of wealthier nations, but it could have tragic consequences for those of poorer ones, especially if higher prices for feed divert production away from food crops. The demand for ethanol is already pushing up prices, and explains, in part, the 40 percent rise last year in the food price index calculated by the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization.
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Though some 800 million people on the planet now suffer from hunger or malnutrition, the majority of corn and soy grown in the world feeds cattle, pigs and chickens. This despite the inherent inefficiencies: about two to five times more grain is required to produce the same amount of calories through livestock as through direct grain consumption, according to Rosamond Naylor, an associate professor of economics at Stanford University. It is as much as 10 times more in the case of grain-fed beef in the United States.
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The environmental impact of growing so much grain for animal feed is profound. Agriculture in the United States — much of which now serves the demand for meat — contributes to nearly three-quarters of all water-quality problems in the nation’s rivers and streams, according to the Evironmental Protection Agency.
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Because the stomachs of cattle are meant to digest grass, not grain, cattle raised industrially thrive only in the sense that they gain weight quickly. This diet made it possible to remove cattle from their natural environment and encourage the efficiency of mass confinement and slaughter. But it causes enough health problems that administration of antibiotics is routine, so much so that it can result in antibiotic-resistant bacteria that threaten the usefulness of medicines that treat people.
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Those grain-fed animals, in turn, are contributing to health problems among the world’s wealthier citizens — heart disease, some types of cancer, diabetes. The argument that meat provides useful protein makes sense, if the quantities are small. But the “you gotta eat meat” claim collapses at American levels. Even if the amount of meat we eat weren’t harmful, it’s way more than enough.
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Americans are downing close to 200 pounds of meat, poultry and fish per capita per year (dairy and eggs are separate, and hardly insignificant), an increase of 50 pounds per person from 50 years ago. We each consume something like 110 grams of protein a day, about twice the federal government’s recommended allowance; of that, about 75 grams come from animal protein. (The recommended level is itself considered by many dietary experts to be higher than it needs to be.) It’s likely that most of us would do just fine on around 30 grams of protein a day, virtually all of it from plant sources .

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*By the way, Mark Bittman wrote this article. He is the author of some reknown cookbooks, both meat and non. I've looked at his renderings of vegetarian cooking in How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, though, and the dishes suck. Oh, bother, I say! Because if this meat-eater is going to write a meat-bashing expose, should not there be an offering of tasty non-meat alternatives at the ready?