Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Family Business = Risky Business


I'll change gears a bit here.

So, the transmission went out on Missy's 2002 Ford Exploder as you may have heard. I couldnt' believe the price on that thing.....$2200 COST! For a less than connected person it would cost over $3k to get that thing put in.

Yes, there's probably cheaper tranny's to get, but noone beats the warranty with the Jasper.

So, to scrounge up the cash to pay for this, I sold our old Honda Accord today. I've been sittin on it for awhile not sure what to do with it. It runs good, and we got about 100k worry free miles out of it as 2nd owners. With 180k miles it's at it's half-life if it gets taken care of properly.

The car has been well serviced. Timing belts replaced religously, we flushed the tranny, the transaxles are pretty new....new tires, new exhaust etc. Low book on it was $1850. The car has been parked at the shop and I've had countless people make offers and inquire about buying it.

NOW, on with it right? Missy's brother and his "fiance" just had a baby this past week. Missy had questioned the foresight of them buying the jacked up Jeep a mere six months ago, but hey, those are their decisions. Now the baby shows up and low and behold a baby seat doesn't do so well in the back of a lifted jeep, or the extra-cab jumper seats of a toyata tacoma.

So, her brother brings the Jeep down to the shop, we put a for-sale sign in it and park it out front. I even made him raise the price $600 bucks b/c I knew it would sell in less than a week. It sold, but Heide (the fiance) came off the price pretty quick and discounted it $500....so at least I made them $100 extra. Turns out the same guy they bought it from, bought it back.

So, they'd been asking about this Honda. I hate selling a car to family, so I kept hoping they'd be able to find something 'Better' but it's hard to beat a nice old Honda Accord. Family deals are way too risky. You sell low, and if something goes wrong, you get the buy the broken car back as if you'd warrantied the thing for 90 days. So, I told them I'd sell it to them for $1500. They gave us $1700 b/c they called the bank and got the book values.

That's cool.

I hope we get through the 90 day implied warranty and then were in the clear.

Somebody came by and asked about the bus today. If could get the $15k I'm looking for my next "investment opportunity" I'd sell that thing....maybe 10k...but no less than that.

I'm plannning on commuting in the bus next year.

A Liberty Tax Billboard on wheels!!!!!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Yes, and it is soooo cool to own a bus...who cares about the other cars!

Rach said...

man I wish I hadn't just bought a new car, I would have bought that bus... you must get, what, all of 5miles to the gallon - what a steal!

crashomatic said...

At 5mpg it's the equivalant of a 5 passenger car getting 40mpg.......

My bus is pretty hard to beat on a mpg per passenger basis.