AJ buys a new car

Buying a new car outright isn’t as easy as you’d think.

Last week I did a post about Progressive trying to fuck me, and mentioned the hassle that came with trying to buy a new car in full.

I was debating if I actually wanted to do a whole post on this, since I know it might come across as kind of braggy, and definitely falls under the category of “first world problems”. I get that not everyone has the luck or connections or opportunities that I do, and the economy is rough as shit right now for most people. I really just want to share a story about something that kind of annoyed me, I’m not trying to financially flex on anyone or anything like that.

Back in October my 2003 Toyota Camry came up for inspection. My rear struts were bad and I had an exhaust leak. I had already poured a shitton of money over the past year into keeping the car alive. This time I was looking at another $1,000+ to fix this shit.

Going back to the whole “not trying to financially flex” thing, I have a good amount of money, most of which is invested in stocks and high-yield savings accounts. Despite this, I’m known to still be pretty frugal, and that’s why I kept dumping money into the old Camry rather than go buy a new car. Something something sunken cost fallacy.

After realizing that the car was becoming a money pit, I decided it was finally time to suck it up and buy it new car. I set a budget for myself, moved some money around, and looked at the inventory of some dealers in the area. The plan was to go in and buy the car in full so I wouldn’t have to deal with things like monthly payments or interest.

Many of you reading this have probably never had to do a purchase or other business transaction in the tens of thousands. Once you reach a certain dollar amount, all kinds of goofy security measures and questions start coming into play. After my previous experience with PNC, I’ve come to realize that people are very suspicious of someone spending that much money in one shot, especially guys in DX hats and Hatsune Miku shirts. The system isn’t designed for financially responsible people, it’s designed to keep the average person in debt. With this in mind, I had the forethought to call the dealerships and ask if they had limits on credit card and check transactions, lest I get there and get bent over by Mr. Murphy and his ever-present law.

The Ford dealership (Chapman Ford on Roosevelt Blvd) refused to let me put more than $2,000 down total, and I was told that they’d have to hold the car until the payment cleared. I’m fairly certain that the person who told me this was completely wrong or intentionally lying to me, but that’s Chapman Ford’s loss, not mine. I quite literally told them “Get fucked” and hung up on them while laughing.

Thankfully, Champion Toyota allowed $5,000 on credit card and another $5,000 on personal check. They also said that if I got a bank check there was no limit. Which would have been fine, except I didn’t know exactly how much the car would cost. I suggested a briefcase full of cash. The person on the phone laughed, but when they realized that I was semi-serious they told me no.

I ended up going to Police and Fire Federal Credit Union and getting a loan good for up to $30,000, then using that in tandem with the credit card and check. The car I bought, a 2022 Toyota Corolla, came to around $26,000, so I paid $10,000, then financed the rest with the loan. The moment the loan was payable, I paid it right off, and only ended up paying $17 in interest. I turned a 5.4% interest rate into a .001% interest rate. My Jewish friend told me that I successfully “out-Jewed the Jews”, but I’ve been told that the Mafia actually runs PFFCU, so I don’t think she was right about that one.

And before you say it, yes, I could have gotten the total, then went to the bank and gotten them to draft a check to the dealership for that exact amount. The problem with this, though, was that the bank closed at 4 on Saturday. By the time I got the total, it was already 3:45. I wouldn’t have made it in time. Even if I had gotten there earlier, the bank was 15-20 minutes away, plus another 5-10 minutes minimum to wait in line and get the check drafted, then another 15-20 minutes to get back to the dealership. I essentially paid $17 to save an hour of my time. On top of that, there’s no guarantee that the dealership would have held the car while I made the run.

I should note here that my experience at Champion Toyota was great. The salesman didn’t pressure me, he worked completely within the budget I gave him, and he even knocked off $500 from the price when I asked them to skip detailing the car. I’ve also read a lot of horror stories about dealerships freaking out if you come in with a preapproved loan or tell them you want to pay in full, since they make money from predatory loans. I was upfront with the salesman the entire time, about both having a preapproved loan and my intent to just pay the thing off outright. Zero issue. These aren’t things a large professional dealership typically cares about. If you’re reading this and you’re from Philly, I highly recommend the Champion Toyota on Cottman Ave. No, I’m not getting paid to endorse them (I’m always open to the idea though…), I’m just genuinely pleased with the service I got.

So I guess the moral of this story is, even when you do have money, it’s not always easy to just make a large purchase. Unless you have an established reputation, places will usually be suspicious of large sums of cash and place restrictions on how much of it you can spend because… terrorism or drugs I guess? I don’t know. All I know is, it was way too much work to go buy a $26,000 car outright, and the part that should have been annoying (going to the dealership) was the only part that WASN’T annoying.

 

 

 

When I tried to sell the 2003 Camry to Carvana, for some reason they demanded a lien release form. This made no sense to me, because the car had been paid off for since 2017. It didn’t matter that I had the title, they still wanted the lien release form too. This would have entailed a visit to the nearest Chase Bank, and a hope and prayer that they still had my records somewhere. So I said “Fuck that”, and went to CarMax instead. CarMax said nothing about a lien release form, and I got $500 more for my car than Carvana was offering.

I’ll probably be doing more of these short off-the-cuff blog posts in the future, since I like doing them. I’ll try to keep them relegated to Tuesdays and Thursdays so they don’t detract too much from the real articles.

Let’s close this one out with a picture of the old Camry. See you in Valhalla, my dear old chariot.