Money
Prices, loans, margins and the arithmetic underneath a car deal.
"What's your monthly budget?"
An annotated transcript of the conversation that decides most car deals, with margin notes on what each line is doing.
APR is not the interest rate
One contract, two percentages, and the reason they don't match - worked all the way through.
Adding a second car
What a second vehicle costs before it moves, and what that works out to per use.
Buying after a repossession
Ten questions worth answering before you shop again. No promises, no rates, no predictions.
Buying with damaged credit
What a lender is looking at, what a down payment does, and the option nobody sells you. No promises, no rates.
Floorplan: the loan on the cars
The draw, the held title, the curtailment, and the day somebody walks the lot counting VINs.
Gap insurance, examined
A decision flow: the conditions under which gap coverage earns its cost, and the conditions under which it is money for nothing.
Getting out of a payment that's too big
Nine ways out, each with its real cost, including the ones that make it worse.
Getting your own loan first
Two orders of operations, step for step, side by side - and what each one does to the conversation at the desk.
How much to put down
Three down payments on the same car, followed to their consequences. Illustrative arithmetic, checked to the cent.
Negative equity, drawn
Two lines and the space between them. Why a car can be worth less than its loan for nearly four years, and what closes the gap.
Paying cash: what it actually saves
The arithmetic on both sides of the beam, including the case against paying cash.
The documentary fee
Six sides of one line on the buyer's order - and the $500 that can sit between two otherwise identical deals.
The five-year number
Five lines, five years, one used car. The payment turns out to be a little over half of it.
The longer-term trick
Two loans on the same car, two dollars apart in monthly payment, and $7,461 of daylight between them. All of it shown.
What a dealer actually makes on a used car
The auction price, the pack, the floorplan interest and the three places the real money hides.
What your credit score does to a payment
The same car, financed six ways. Illustrative rate bands, real amortization, and the one figure the bands never touch.
Wholesale and retail are two prices
Two markets, one car, the same afternoon. What the spread between them is actually buying.
Why a price changes while it sits
Two lines moving toward each other: what the car costs to hold, and what the market will still pay for it.
Why we post the price
Putting the number on the windshield costs us the most profitable conversation in the business. An argument for doing it anyway.