This week’s show was about buying a car. JD shared his experience driving around town to buy a Mini Cooper and some of the mistakes he made while Jim shared some insight into buying cars on eBay, where he’s bought two. With JD, he found that he had to negotiate with a manager even after he negotiated down the salesperson, a common tactic car dealerships use to get a buyer to become emotionally invested in a car. Jim shared some of the mechanics involved in buying a car through eBay, the weakness of the eBay protection system, as well as how much it costs to actually ship a car.

This week we had several callers that shared their car buying experiences. Neal of WealthPilgrim purchased a used Lexus and had the foresight to ask that it be inspected by a Lexus dealership. For $200, he got the same inspection Lexus does before putting the stamp of approval as a “certified pre-owned vehicle.” Casey called in to tell us that you could buy used car from car rental companies and her family had done so with great success, having bought four cars this way at a great price.

We thank all the callers who call in and share their experiences and hope that we can hear from you next week as we discuss travel: how to save on booking travel, how to save while on travel, and how to have fun at the same time! We hope to hear from you then!

Posts of the Week

Jim’s post of the week is more a public service announcement than anything else. The detectives at the Consumerist talked to a reader, Timeus, who sent in some pictures on what card skimmers look like when they’re still on the ATM. A card skimmer is a device that sits on top of the existing card reading device on the ATM and collects your data. There are also cameras, as seen in the photos, that watch you enter in your PIN. It’s a very real problem and it’s important to see what they look like so you can protect yourself. Here’s a diagram from the Baltimore Sun’s Consuming Interests blog.

Sometimes it can be fun to find a blog devoted to a single financial subject. Crawling Road is just such a blog. You won’t find discussions on a range of personal finance topics here — just in-depth information about a single asset allocation, Harry Browne’s Permanent Portfolio. Crawling Road is my find of the week because it provided fascinating information on an interesting topic, information I couldn’t find anywhere else on the web.

Trivia

Congratulations to Brian for correctly answering last week’s trivia question. The answer was the 1933 St Gaudens Double Eagle gold coin! Your prize is a copy of Millionaire by Thirty: The Quickest Path to Early Financial Independence, which will be in the mail shortly.

This weeks trivia contest isn’t so trivial. Send your best tip on buying or selling a car — or on saving money with any other aspect of vehicle ownership — and you’ll be eligible to win a personal finance book from the Get Rich Slowly vaults. One winner will be selected at random from those who submit tips to trivia at personalfinancehour dot com.