Click below to listen to Episode 186 – Do These 7 Things Before Buying Your Next Vehicle






Do These 7 Things Before Buying Your Next Vehicle

Following these 7 tips before purchasing your next vehicle could save you thousands!

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Are you thinking about buying a car? Bob and Shawn discuss 7 smart steps to take before you make your decision. This episode is here to help you learn how to make the right vehicle choice with confidence.

It’s crucial to approach the car purchase with the right mindset, not emotions. A vehicle’s price is more than the minimum monthly payment, and it is important to be cautious of all of the add ons and price points that many salespeople will use to manipulate you into a premature purchase. These tips, along with several others, may just help you save thousands on your next car purchase!

HOSTED BY: Bob Barber, CWS^®, CKA^®
CO-HOST: Shawn Peters

Mentioned In This Episode













Christian Financial Advisors



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Bob Barber, CWS^®, CKA^®



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Shawn Peters



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Bible Verses In This Episode






JAMES 1:5

If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Shawn:

Thinking about buying a car? Here are seven smart steps to take before you decide. Learn how to make the right choice with confidence. Let’s get some perspective.

Welcome to another episode of Christian Financial Perspectives. My name’s Shawn Peters. I’m joined as always by my co-host, Bob Barber, and today we’re going to be talking about the seven things to consider before buying your next vehicle. And so we feel that this will be a really helpful one to cover whether you’ve got a little bit of money or a lot of money or somewhere in between. First and foremost, we’re going to go over our scripture, James 1:5, “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God who gives generously to all without finding fault and will be given to you.” Now, we do have one thing to cover before we get into the official seven things, but we’re kind of bringing this episode to you because this is, I would say, very close to Bob’s heart because these are things that he does. And Bob, I’d say you’re probably one of the few people that kind of enjoy almost the game of buying a car.

Bob:

It’s unfortunate, but I kind of do.

Shawn:

Where most of us get stressed out and frustrated with the whole process. So, the idea here is we’re going to hopefully try to glean from Bob’s experience.

Bob:

I played Monopoly when I was a kid.

Shawn:

And you actually loved it.

Bob:

I loved it. I mean, I’m talking like seven and eight years old. I was playing Monopoly.

Shawn:

That explains so much.

Bob:

That’s it. I mean it’s kind of like that. So I know it’s a process and it can be so stressful, but Shawn cars are so expensive today. Vehicles.

Shawn:

Crazy expensive.

Bob:

Yes. We’ve had several clients recently buy trucks and I’m like, $50-60,000 and these are not the loaded trucks.

Shawn:

If you’re lucky, for a truck.

Bob:

Oh my goodness.

Shawn:

I mean, Bob, we live in a world now where you can buy a Kia that’s $60,000 and that’s the normal price.

Bob:

Yeah.

Shawn:

If you told me that 10 years ago, I would’ve said you’re crazy. But it’s true.

Bob:

Anyway, the first thing, I mean, we’re going to have seven things that we’re going to talk about when buying a car. This is not the first one, but it kind of is the most important thing that I see.

Shawn:

And it’s coming to this with the right mindset, I guess, is how you want to consider.

Bob:

That’s right. So use your savings to buy a car, not your investments. A car is a depreciating asset, Shawn.

Shawn:

And for those who aren’t up to date on their financial terms, depreciating meaning it goes down in overall value over time.

Bob:

Yeah. Cars go down, and investments go up over time. Don’t take something that’s growing and appreciating to put it into something that is depreciating.

Shawn:

And losing value over time.

Bob:

An example of this, let’s take the $50,000 car.

Shawn:

Which is probably average, I would say, nowadays.

Bob:

You’ve got your long-term investment plan, let’s say a balanced or a moderate portfolio making 6% or 7% a year. And so through the rule of 72’s compound interests, we’ve shared that on some other programs. Now, if you take that 50k out of the investment plan, it’s not going to double to 100k in like 10 years, and it’s not going to double to 200k in like 20 years. So I always think of it this way.

Shawn:

So over 20 years, the $50,000 could fairly easily grow to $200,000 in value.

Bob:

Based on historical results. That’s right.

Shawn:

So if you take that $50,000 out of your investment portfolio to buy a car, how much is the car going to be worth in 20 years?

Bob:

I’m guessing $10,000 or 15,000 at the most.

Shawn:

Yeah. Seems about right.

Bob:

Would anybody want to be in an investment plan where you’re guaranteed to lose every single year? I mean, no. Not at all. But people do that with vehicles and it is just amazing how much money is wasted on vehicles. So today what we’re going to do is we’re going to go over the seven things to do before you buy your next vehicle, and hopefully this will at least help you some in saving $5,000 or $10,000 when you’re buying that next vehicle.

Shawn:

I think what we just covered, Bob, kind of brings up a side point if you will, but if your only real option after we cover all these things, if your only real option to buy a car is to take money out of your investment portfolio, then don’t buy the car in the first place. Or, you need to significantly lower your expectations of the kind of car that you want. You don’t need the new $50,000 car. Maybe you need to get a used, not as nice, car because I understand, we understand you have to have a vehicle nowadays.

Bob:

You do.

Shawn:

Especially if you have a growing family. But that does not mean you need to spend anywhere near $50,000 on a car.

Bob:

No, you could buy a 3 or 4-year-old car that maybe has 50,000 miles on it, has another 150k to go – 150,000 miles to go. Now I understand some of you don’t have the savings either, so if you are going to, you’re just absolutely going to buy one, go talk to your credit union about the best interest rate deal you can get. I wouldn’t use the dealership. They may have higher rates. Okay.

Shawn:

Alright. So now on the main event, now the seven things before buying that next vehicle, number one, select the vehicle you want first and foremost by test driving a few at a dealership. But here’s the kicker. Whatever you do, please do not buy for at least another three to four weeks, it will save you thousands of dollars.

Bob:

It will. I’ve seen it over and over. Do not let those emotions get involved. Get away from that dealership. Just find the car you want first because there’s going to be a what?

Shawn:

Why should they wait three to four weeks and not buy that first day of the dealership? Well, it’s because the dealers…Are not going to give you the best price on that first day. You want them to sweat a little bit and try to move that unit, move that product off of their lot. So you give ’em a few more weeks, you don’t look desperate. So you’re negotiating from a position of power.

Bob:

That’s right. They just keep lowering and lowering and lowering the price.

Shawn:

They want to get you in. Yep. So number two, after finding the exact make model, color and year that you’re wanting to buy, search multiple websites. You want to get a good idea of what that car is actually worth, what it’s going for in the market right now. So cars.com, Autotrader, Edmonds, I mean there’s a lot of them.

Bob:

And they’ll give you a mile radius, do it within about a 500 mile radius, not just your local area. A car again is a $50,000 investments investment. It’s not really an investment. What would you call a car?

Shawn:

It’s a necessary expense.

Bob:

It’s a necessary expense.

Shawn:

It’s not an asset, it’s not an investment.

Bob:

So if you got to drive seven or eight hours to go get that car to save yourself $5,000 or $6,000, it’s worth it. Definitely. Or just have it shipped.

Shawn:

Yeah. Sometimes it might even be worth it because if you can save $6,000 might be a thousand dollars to ship it. Well, great.

Bob:

You’re going to be surprised in the variation in dollar amounts on one of these websites like cars.com or edmonds.com or Autotrader.

Shawn:

One kind of sub bullet point on this though is when you’re searching, if you’re looking at a car and you’re seeing that make model color, everything but similar mileage and the car is, let’s say the car is around $40,000 to $50,000 pretty much across the board, if all of a sudden you see a listing for $30,000,

Bob:

That car’s been damaged.

Shawn:

Yeah, probably. It’s one of those things where they’re not being upfront about it and there was something going on and I actually learned that, thankfully not the hard way, but I learned that because I kept seeing for some of these used cars that Jenna and I were looking at like, man, why are some of these options so much better and the car seems to be in really good shape? And then you find out, oh, it’s because they sell a lot of those almost like refurbished because it was in a water damage or it was in an accident, it was totaled. There’s all kinds of stuff.

Bob:

It’s the old saying, “If it sounds so good to be true, it is.” So this third point, this is really something, I’ve done this a lot. Okay?

Shawn:

If it’s a new vehicle, if it’s a new vehicle.

Bob:

If it’s a new vehicle. So if it’s a new vehicle and you found exactly what you want, I have a Nissan Pathfinder.

Shawn:

Whatever it is, go to the manufacturer’s website.

Bob:

Go to the manufacturer website

Shawn:

And find up to 10 dealerships within say 200 to 500 mile radius where you live. Then you’re going to take those dealers and you’re going to contact each one, preferably by email because you want to hear everything in writing, but you can initially talk to ’em over the phone and tell ’em precisely what you want. Now here’s the kicker on this. You want to get the drive out price in writing via email. Do not even tell them whether or not you’re considering a trade-in. Just say that’s not relevant for the discussion right now. You’re just looking for the best price. You may or may not trade in. That’s all they need to know. So once you get that price, take the lowest price and let all the other dealerships know it. Do this two or three times and you know you’ve found more or less the lowest price when they’re only coming back and dropping maybe a hundred dollars. At that point, go to the closest dealer, the local dealer, see if they’ll match it. Sometimes they will. Other times they’ll say, nah, we can’t match that, which is fine. Then in which case, go to another one.

Bob:

I’ve done this over and over, Shawn, and I mean from the time I begin to the time I’m done doing this, there’s about a $5,000 difference. I am amazed and we’re talking y’all just a couple weeks. So this is why it’s so important to follow this process to not buy that car that first day. You are literally throwing $,4000 or $5,000… you’re just throwing it away, right? Okay, alright.

Shawn:

Number four, get educated. All along the way during this process you want to get educated. So obviously this video is intended to try to help you with that, but there are also some other really awesome channels that are more dedicated.

Bob:

By the way, when we were starting this video, it’s one of these as I watched, I said, they do such a great job. They’re a father son team.

Shawn:

Father in law, son in law. Close enough.

Bob:

But YAA. Go on YouTube and put in “YAA car buying” and they’re really fun to watch, too. They have about 10 or 15 minute videos and they go through all of the things you need to be thinking about.

Shawn:

Tricks and techniques that car dealerships will use. They’ve even done some almost like mock scenarios where the dad kind of pretends like he’s the dealership, the car salesman guy, or he’s the finance manager. And so they go through in more detail on a lot of things that we’ve kind of alluded to on this. So I think that’s another really good one is go through and just learn how the tricks and these add-ons and all this other nonsense stuff that they’re just trying to make money on.

Bob:

It’s because the dad was in the car, he’s been in the car business for a very long time and some examples they’ll give you and I’m going to give you right now is don’t ever buy a car just on car payment. That’s crazy.

Shawn:

The price is what actually matters.

Bob:

Right. Because the car payment, even though you may be buying a car on payment, what interest rate are they charging? How long are the terms? They really hark a lot on that program about the extended warranties and how a huge markup.

Shawn:

Paint protection.

Bob:

Right. So these extras all have a lot of markup and you just don’t need ’em. Stay away from it.

Shawn:

High markup and little to no value.

Bob:

Number five, do not allow emotions at all to play into the vehicle deal. I know that’s hard, but you’ve heard me say over and over that emotions have no place in financial transactions. They just don’t have a place in it. Don’t let the car person manipulate you, folks. I’m sorry, and I don’t mean to be putting down. There’s just some good car salespeople that even go to our church.

Shawn:

But they will try to be your best friend. They will tell you what you want to hear. Bob’s been in the investment industry a long time and he’s heard it countless times of, “Well, what is it you do? Oh, I really need to talk to you about that. I really need to do some financial planning or I like that you guys are a Christian company. I really want to work with that.” And then weird how after Bob bought the car that they never called him, never one time, just disappeared.

Bob:

I’ve never had it happen one single time.

Shawn:

But they’re saying all this, they’re doing this because they’re paid on a commission. They have a significant conflict of interest to do what’s in their best interest monetarily and not yours, all the way down to signing the paperwork in the finance office where they try to sell you more so that sales guy is not your lifeline to make sure that the finance manager isn’t raking you over the coals. They’re still trying to close that deal.

Bob:

And they’re trying to sell you those extras. The finance manager gets paid based on that, too. So throughout the whole thing, it’s just spending extra thousands and thousands of dollars if you don’t follow these guidelines that we’re putting in place for you.

Shawn:

So be on your guard and be very suspicious until you are finally home with the new car, right? Or the new-to-you card.

Bob:

And unfortunately, I’m sorry you have to do that, but you have to. Okay, number six, do everything online, if possible. This is where I said in the beginning, you go find the car that you want, but from that point, the only time you should step into the dealership again would be the day you buy it.

Shawn:

Or you’re picking up the vehicle. Maybe you even sign the paperwork electronically and so you’re just walking in to pick up the keys and get a copy of the executed paperwork.

Bob:

So many benefits to doing that. The emotions are not there. The price transparency is. You’re not under pressure.

Shawn:

It’s a lot more convenient.

Bob:

You get to read all the paperwork, the speed, and you get the selection of the vehicle that you want. So there’s so many benefits to buying that car lot online. And then we come down to the seventh and I think one of the most important points of buying a car, because it is one of the largest purchases you do in your life besides your home.

Shawn:

Pray about the decision.

Bob:

Yes.

Shawn:

Because this is not a decision that you should be making quickly. It’s not a decision that you should be making under pressure. There is no emergency to buy that car. It doesn’t matter what it is. Doesn’t matter how good the car people, salespeople think the deal is.

Bob:

Even if it’s broken down, you can go rent a car for a few days.

Shawn:

Exactly. So pray about it. Seek wise counsel from someone with your best interest in mind, not a salesperson.

Bob:

And integrate, because it’s such a large purchase today, it needs to be integrated into a financial plan, in my opinion. As we get to the point, like I said in the beginning, over the years, vehicle purchases have cost people many hundreds of thousands of dollars and lost net worth in the future.

Shawn:

Without anything really to show for it.

Bob:

Yeah, exactly.

Shawn:

Buying vehicles is usually the second largest expenditure that most people will make in life besides buying home.

Bob:

So, let’s end on the scripture we started with.

Shawn:

That’s right, James 1:5, “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God who gives generously to all without finding fault and it will be given to you.” Thanks for joining us. Feel free to post stuff in the comments if there’s any other topics that you want us to cover. It doesn’t have to be about investments. If we can tie it to finance, we’re happy to help. Thanks, God bless.

[DISCLOSURES]

* Investment advisory services offered through Christian Investment Advisors Inc dba Christian Financial Advisors, a registered investment advisor registered with the SEC. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply a certain level of skill or training. Comments from today’s show are for informational purposes only and not to be considered investment advice or recommendations to buy or sell any company that may have been mentioned or discussed. The opinions expressed are solely those of the hosts, Bob Barber and Shawn Peters, and their guests. Bob and Shawn do not provide tax advice and encourage you to seek guidance from a tax professional. While Christian Financial Advisors believes the information to be accurate and reliable, we do not claim or have responsibility for its completeness, accuracy, or reliability.