Economy and the Bailout Plan: Down, but Not Out!

Yesterday the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed the day down 777 points! Needless to say that’s going to get your attention when you flip on your local news and the anchors are attributing it to a House funding bill, vital in avoiding a financial meltdown, that failed.

Especially when you had no inclination there was a financial crisis to begin with.

Case in point: last night I met up with a college roommate who was back in the States from work he does in Italy, the Czech Republic and the Ukraine. We had dinner with his parents and some of his other friends. I didn’t get to talk about the economy with my old roommate, but his dad (knowing I follow the markets on a daily basis) asked me, “What the heck is going on?”

I kind of laughed at first because it seems

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As my wife and I have started to research for our next car purchase, I was introduced to the Rule of 19 by the local car salesman… I asked “Rule of 19?” I am only aware of the Rule of 72.  The car salesman provided the a quick definition being a general rule of thumb of how much your monthly car payment would be for the total amount financed.  The car salesman quickly calculated that for every $1,000 that I financed, I would pay $19 per month. Aware of the car buying process and following the advice of many experts, I wanted to negotiate one thing at a time: #1. Total Car purchase price, #2. Financing (lease vs buy, interest rate), and #3. Trade-in value. Intrigued on what assumptions this rule of 19 depends on, I decided to re-create the math.  Basically, the Rule of 19 is ...

When you finally payoff that loan it is a huge accomplishment, don’t change your budget and continue to make the payments to yourself.

We purchased our first car back in October 2003 with a 5 year (60 month) loan at 0% APR. This was a great deal and looking forward to paying the loan off in the next few months. We also decided to enter into a 2-year lease for our second car due to our work commutes. Just recently, we made our final lease payment and decided to turn the car in, going from a 2-car to a single car household.

Since we no longer need a second car, we have decided to continue to save our monthly payments into a new account to be used as a down payment for the next car …