Maybe I'll buy an old man car...

So I've been thinking about cars lately, as I often tend to do. I currently drive a two-year-old Ford Ranger. I think I'll probably hang onto it for a few more years - it's been fine reliability-wise, it's paid off, and it's already taken most of the hit depreciation-wise. Gas mileage has been around 16-20 depending on how much city vs. local driving I do, which isn't great, but isn't Hummer bad either.

But I'm a bit of a car guy. I'm always thinking about what my next car is going to be, even though - because I'm also cheap - I can't really bring myself to buy a new car unless the old one is getting expensive enough to keep running to justify it's replacement.

My original thought on cars was to keep the Ranger, but to buy a used, second, smaller, sportier car - probably a convertible - to use most of the time, and use the Ranger for snow or when I need to haul stuff, like Hamfests.

But of late, I've had another idea - trade in the Ranger for a gently-used, old-man car. You know, like a Grand Marquis, Town Car, or DeVille.

Looking at some used car websites, these cars go cheap used - they depreciate heavily, because evidently there isn't a huge resale market for old-man cars. They usually have low mileage and have been taken care of and driven slowly, probably with their left turn signal on the whole time. They have comfy leather seats, and one of my favorite features - automatic climate control. One of my pet peeves in the winter is fiddling with the heat while I'm driving - it seems like it only has two settings, on and boiling hot or off and freezing cold. Gas mileage is about the same as the Ranger, and while I probably couldn't fit quite as much as I can in the Ranger, between the giant back seat and the trunk I could probably haul quite a bit in a Town Car or Grand Marquis. Sure, I'd lose 4wd, but how often do I really need it - my workplace generally closes when the weather's bad, and traction control would be good enough for most driving anyway. Plus, I'd get a bumper that's normal height, so I wouldn't do nearly as much damage when backing into elderly women.

The one disadvantage of an old-man car over, say, a yellow truck or a flashy sports car is the lack of wow! factor - nobody ever says "hey, nice Grand Marquis!". Of course, if I'm trying to keep from being pulled over on the freeway, that could be a plus. And if I really wanted to, I could probably throw some blinged-out rims on it. In fact, I think a black DeVille or Town Car with a set of black 20" rims would look pretty flippin' sweet, if I could find one without the stupid carriage roof that old people seem to love as much as Matlock and bingo.

And now, a random picture post...

I had three pics that don't really fit anywhere, but that I wanted to post:

Holy Cow! - I was behind this Turkey Hill Duetto promotional cow pulling into a rest stop on my outlet trip to PA, and had to get a picture.

The Modernaire - I loved the hip name and art-deco styling of this motel that I passed on my PA day-cation.

SpitFireSuz and me - chillin' with my new internet friend at DuClaw on Monday.

Why I buy cheap stuff instead of good stuff....

Consumerist has a lengthy thread debating why people would rather buy cheap crap than quality items. It was inspired by this MSN article on what you should spend or splurge on.

Most of the time, I buy cheap stuff. Why? Because for what I use most of the stuff I buy, cheap is good enough.

Things I go cheap on:

Furniture - most of my furniture is from Ikea or Target, along with a couple of bookshelves from Staples and a few family cast offs. Yes, good quality hardwood furniture would be nicer. But I seldom have guests over, I have a cat who loves to claw furniture, and as a straight, single male, I don't really care all that much what my house looks like. Buying cheap furniture let me furnish a 1200 square foot townhouse, when my previous residence was a single rented room, without breaking the bank.

Electronics - Some of my stuff is more midrange than cheap, but some of it is bottom of the barrel. I have a Cisnet PC, a Trutech TV, a Zune as my MP3 player. I have a decent stereo system. Once again, I'm not an audiophile, I don't watch a lot of movies, and my cheap 32" no-name LCD TV is fine for watching Burn Notice and half-watching the news while typing on my laptop.

Clothes - most of my clothing comes from the clearance rack of Target and Old Navy. I work in IT for a college, so I can get away with dressing like a ragamuffin. Actually, it doesn't make sense for me to get too dressed up, since I'm sometimes crawling under desks or moving equiptment. My weight also tends to fluctuate - I've dropped ~90 pounds, although I've gained about 15 of that back, and plan to make a concerted effort to lose it and some more once my schedule slows down. It doesn't make sense for me to dump money into clothes that might not fit me in the near future. Plus, I have a bad habit of spilling stuff on myself while eating, and I'd hate to have a $50 shirt taken out by ketchup or a cup of coffee. Also, the more clothes I own, the longer I can go without doing laundry - so I'd rather have 10 $5 shirts than one $50 shirt.

Kitchenware - this is one that got a lot of mention in the consumerist comments as something worth spending money on. Maybe for pro cooks, but not for me. Most of the time, the only thing I need a knife for is opening the sauce packet from my Trader Joe's Orange Chicken. When I do cook, it's basic stuff like sauerkraut or pasta fagioli. I don't need copper-bottomed pots or $100 knives - my $10 tin knives will do fine. I own a couple decent Calaphon pans, but only because I got them on clearance for 75% off at Target a few years ago.

There are only two things I can think of that I usually spend a lot of money on. The first is my house. Buying it stretched my budget, and it was at the top of what I could afford. But while I wouldn't have bought a house when I did if I could go back in time, buying a cheap house isn't always a great move - houses tend to be cheap for a reason, and that means more expenses later on. It also means there may be some feature that makes it hard to sell when you it comes time to sell. Also, buying a house has significant transaction costs - the stress of moving, closing costs, realtor fees - so it makes more sense to buy the house you'll need in a few years rather than have to sell and rebuy soon after you bought.

The other area I tend to splurge on is cars. I don't buy fancy cars, and I don't buy a new car every year, but I consider myself a bit of a car enthusiast, and don't think I'll ever be one of those people who buys a vehicle and keeps it for 10 or 15 years. My thought of late has been to buy somewhat flashy but practical vehicles - my current ride is a bright-yellow Ford Ranger - and keep them for a few years. I've had the Ranger for 2 years, and I'm already thinking of what I will buy when it comes time to replace it, although that probably won't be for a couple more years.

My outlet advetnture...

So I drove up to scenic Lancaster, PA to go outlet shopping. I didn't have a pressing need for anything, but I figured that although I couldn't really justify taking a vacation this year, I could at least take a day-cation, and pick up some useful stuff while I'm at it.

I picked Lancaster because BSOM had gone there with his wife a few months ago and had good things to say about it, and there were some interesting stores there, including a Pepperidge Farm outlet and a QVC outlet. Sure, there were closer outlets, as a commenter on my previous post pointed out, but hell, I'm splurging - it's my day-cation!

I set off with a mental list of things I could use if I found good deals on them, and to not spend more than $100 - enough that I could actually do some shopping, without taking too big a blow to my accident-damaged savings.

First stop was the Tangier Outlets. My purchases:

Aeropostale:

1 checkered long-sleeve shirt - $3.90

Bannana Republic

1 long sleeve zip sweater - $12.99

Reebock Outlet

1 pair fleece sweatpants $27.99 (I know, not much of a deal, but I live in sweatpants during the winter, and it's hard for a short guy to find decent-looking ones with elastic around the legs

1 pair dazzle basketball shorts - $8.99

Then, after a tasty lunch at Sonic of a breakfast bistro sandwich, tater tots, a lime diet coke, and a fried ice cream sonic blast, I headed to the Rockvale outlets 2 miles down the road

VF Clearance Outlet

1 Perry Ellis sweater - $7.99

1 Perry Ellis half-zip sweatr - $7.99

VF Outlet

1 pair Lee carpenter jeans - $20

Steve and Barry's

2 pairs jeans - $8.98 each


That comes to $107.81, not including the ~$13 I spent on bread and goldfish at the Pepperidge Farm outlet. While I hate spending all that money all at once, and while there were a few things I was hoping to pick up that I didn't, like underwear, I think I did well.

I shopped the way I shop normal stores - headed straight to the back for the clearance racks.

My thoughts on outlet shopping - I'll do it again, for the experience, but it's not a great way to save money, and not just because I burned through almost $40 worth of gas. I'm not normally a brand-name shopper - most of my clothing comes from the clearance rack of Target or Old Navy - so I'm not exactly the ideal person for an outlet full of brand-name clothing. Outlet shopping is also better for outerwear and the like than for staples like undewear and socks, whose prices seemed pretty close to retail. And like any other kind of shopping, the best deals are on the clearance racks and on stuff that's out of season.

As far as the two outlet malls, I liked Rockvale better - it was bigger, better looking, and and had a lot more non-clothing stores, like Pepperidge Farm and QVC (which was fun to poke through, although most of the stuff is crap). But since both are so close to each other, so it's stupid not to go to both.

This may become a mad anthony summer tradition. Heck, depending on what people ask me for for Christmas, I might make a trip back up in December.

Being a total dick is easy, thanks to the web...

Via a thread on fatwallet comes this rather disturbing article about professional trolls. Most of their exploits involve posting people's personal info online, resulting in such hilarious things as phone calls to people whose son recently committed suicide. Classy.

They justify it with talk of how they are teaching people not to take things too seriously on the web, because they are just words.

But words, of course, are how we communicate much of how we feel and what we think, and how we gather much of our information about the world.

I realize that the internet is not always what it seems, that people lie, that we need to take things with a grain of salt. At the same time, most of the people online are real, there are real people behind the flashing electrons on the screen, and the internet connects real people who have real-world lives, be it on a message board, a dating site, or eBay. And actions started online have real consequences.

And yes, I realize emoting on stuff like this is exactly what trolls get off on. And there are always people who will be dicks, be it online or in the real world. But the net makes it easier, both in terms of audience and in terms of being anonymous. And while trolls won't destroy the net, they make it a little less pleasant in the same way that people who are dicks in general make the world less pleasant.

Taking a (very) mini vacation...

I don't take vacations. Spending money on hotels and food away has always seemed like a whole lot of money to spend, money that could be better spent paying down my killer mortgage and other debt. Plus, I generally try to limit the number of days off, figuring that the more I'm at work, the better it is for my career.

But my boss has been harping on me to take some time off (why, I don't really understand), and I do have a floating holiday I need to use before I lose it. I figure it wouldn't be a bad idea to spend some time away from Casa De Mad and work (assuming my cell doesn't ring....). So I decided to take a day off tomorrow and visit scenic Lancaster, PA and do some outlet shopping.

I'm not sure this is a great idea. Vacations are supposed to be stress-free, and I can't help wondering if using a tank of gas, a day of vacation, and whatever money I spend on buying stuff is a good use of money when I have a $2000 repair bill hanging over my head for the woman I backed into, plus some repairs I eventually need to get done to my house before my HOA starts leaving more dunning notices on my door. But compared to an actual vacation, this is a drop in the bucket, and I could use some new clothes. Plus, there's a Sonic in Lancaster, and none in Maryland. And a Pepperidge Farm outlet, so I can stock up on stale cookies and bread.

As long as I can keep from backing into anyone else.

So tomorrow is my 1-day vacation

Meeting random internet friends in real life...

So last month, a regular poster on the Fatwallet.com off-topic forum posted that she was going to be in the Aberdeen, MD area and was wondering if anyone wanted to hang out. I live pretty close to the area, and figured it would be cool to meet an online poster in the meatspace, so I agreed. She got a few other nibbles, but nobody else committed.

So on Monday, I drove up to DuClaw in BelAir to meet SpitFireSuz. I was a little apprehensive, since I'm not known for my crazy people skills, not to mention the whole idea of meeting random people online. Besides, what would I have to say - could a shared interest in deeply-discounted merchandise fill an hour or so of conversation with a stranger?

It actually turned out pretty fun, though - she was one of those bubbly, outgoing people who is really good at starting and carrying on conversations, and we ended up covering a ton of topics, from work to cats to cars to food to family. I left my camera in the car for this, but she took a couple pics and promised to forward them to me when she gets back home.

It was definitely more fun than my usual Monday night activities, which usually consist of watching Law and Order and surfing the web. It also gives me a minor boost to my generally lacking social skills - I can actually talk to people I don't know.

The cost of a moment's inattention...

Well, I got a call back from the woman I backed into last week. She went to a couple places and the $1652 estimate was the lowest. Plus it's going to take 3-4 days, so I have to pay for a rental car. And the body shop wants either cash or a certified check. They aren't going to be able to work on the car for another week or two, so I have some time to say good-bye to my hard earned money.

I'm starting to wish I'd gone through insurance. But the problem is that by the time I realized that the cost and hassle of this is probably going to be more than the increase, if any, that it would have made on my rates, it was too late. Somewhere in standard insurance contracts is an agreement that you will report accidents within a certain amount of time, usually 24 or 48 hours. It was 72 hours before the person had an estimate, and even then it hadn't really sunk in that I probably would have been better off going through insurance.

This is really getting to me - every time I think about it, I want to cry. I'm normally a very thrifty, frugal person. I go out of my way to save money - hell, I was out trying to make money when I hit her. I do rebates, I eBay, I buy stuff on sale, I've never really taken a vacation, I work overtime when I can, I don't eat out if I can help it, I pretty much defer all gratification so I can save money. And then, in two seconds, I wipe out about 3 weeks worth of salary.

I really can't stand myself.

Yet another reason to hate the housing bailout...

So there is this housing bailout bill that looks like it's going to become law. Now, I'm generally against the housing bailout in general - my thought is that the best thing to do is let the market find bottom and correct itself. It doesn't help that the bill seems to help those who didn't buy (by offering a tax credit to first-time homebuyers) or who bought way more than they should have (by bailing out people with ARM's and IO mortgages that are readjusting) while doing absolutly nothing for people like me who bought with a fixed-rate loan - people who are paying their mortgage but can't sell without taking a major hit.

But the bill goes beyond that. It also attacks a group of people who aren't looking for a bailout, but rather are out hustling to make some extra bucks. I'm talking about eBayers. The bill adds a provision that requires payment processors like PayPal to report people to the IRS who have over 200 transactions and $10,000 in revenue a year.

Now, I realize that in theory, people selling on eBay should be reporting their income to the IRS. Of course, people are also supposed to drive the speed limit, not download music, and pay sales tax to their state on stuff they buy online.

For many people, myself included, eBay is something that is more than a hobby but less than a real business. I run my eBay sales as a hobby - I don't keep track of how much I pay for stuff, how much I make, or how much of my time and money I spend tracking down items, cleaning/fixing them, listing them, shipping them, ect. When I get paid for items, I transfer the money to my savings account and watch it grow.

This bill puts a huge burden on people like me - and requires a lot of people to spend a whole lot more time keeping records and trying to figure out how much money they actually make. It's also tricky for people like me who often mingle person stuff with stuff purchased for resale - while much of what I sell I bought planning to sell, I also often sell used items of my own or stuff I bought that I decided I wasn't going to use.

My guess is that when the law takes effect, lots of ebayers will suddenly have sales of 199 items a year and revenue of $9,999 or so. If you are borderline for being affected by the law, it makes sense to reduce your sales so you aren't affected.

I've already shifted a chunk of my selling to hamfests - specialty or rare items go on eBay, but the cheaper/commodity stuff goes to hamfests and is paid for in cash. I also might start looking to craigslist for selling stuff.

I don't think the bill will generate as much money as the government hopes - it will be very easy for ebay sellers, who often buy merchandise for cash, to fudge the numbers on how much they paid for stuff, and I think people will also move away from eBay towards in-person sales.

Now, some people may figure this is good - that those greedy eBayers deserve to be taxed. That is a reasonable view, although not one I embrace. But the fact that this was snuck into a bill that has enormous political pressure to get passed, and that it's received almost no attention from the media because of this, suggests that the government doesn't want people debating the merits of this bill - which suggests that I'm probably not the only person who doesn't like it.

Chillin' with the rents...

So my parents came down this weekend - they got here on Thursday afternoon, and went back this morning.

They came down last year. That was kind of a big deal, because it was the first time they saw my house. This year they had already seen the house, so it wasn't as big a deal. It was the first time they met Nibbler the cat. My mom was eager to see her - she regularly watches the The NibblerCam from NJ. My dad, on the other hand, thinks animals belong outside. So of course, every time my mom tried to pet the cat, she would run way. On the other hand, she kept sniffing around my dad, perched on the arm of the sofa next to him, ect.

We didn't do a whole lot. We went out to eat at the Outback Thursday night, drove up and toured the Fiore Winery on Friday, then went to dinner at the Olive Garden. My parents liked Fiore - my dad's mother's maiden name was Fiore, so that was kind of cool, plus they made a bunch of the dry red wines my parents like - but luckily they also had some sweeter wines for wine pussies like me. We grabbed breakfast at a local diner this morning, and then they drove to NJ.

One thing this visit reminds me of is how old my parents are getting - they are both approaching their 70's, and my mom has been having a lot of problems with her knees, among other things. She had some trouble getting up the stairs in my townhouse - I live in a split-foyer - the poor man's version of a split-level house, so it's about a 2/3 of a flight up to my living room. When we went anywhere, I found myself having to wait for them to catch up. That was the reason our dinners were at chain restaurants near my house, instead of Little Italy where we would always go when they visited me when I was in college, and where we went last year - they didn't want to have to deal with walking several blocks from the parking garage to the restaurant. It's kind of scary and sad watching your parents get old. If I am to get married and have kids - and I hope to - I'd like to do it while they are still around, and the fact that they are getting old and I don't seem to be getting any less single is kind of worrysome.

Still, I'm glad they were able to make it, and it was nice to see them, and nice that they got out of NJ for a few days - and that I got out of work for a day and a half.