buying a car

How Much is My Junk Car Worth?

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If you’ve never had the need to get rid of a junk car, count yourself lucky. Dumping a clunker can be a real hassle. The trick is to minimize your financial loss without spending a huge amount of time, effort and expense. I’ve had to unload more than a few junkers over the years and it’s never been fun.

For most consumers, junking a car is a losing proposition. But for entrepreneurs, there’s plenty of money to be made. Think about all of the print, TV, and radio advertisements you’ve endured for WeBuyAnyCar, for example. Their pervasive jingle is a highly-effective earworm. If they weren’t making a pile of money off the transactions, they wouldn’t be able to drop so much on advertising. For WeBuyAnyCar and similar firms, junk cars can be gold.

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How Much Do You Spend on Gas Each Month?

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Do you keep track of much you spend on gasoline every month?

What would you do with a spare twenty, fifty, or hundred dollars?

Making some small changes can save a nice chunk of cash over time. The biggest change, of course, is switching from a gas sucking pig into something that’s more fuel efficient. But if you need to have a big truck or SUV, you need to have it. No arguments here. Everyone in America should have the choice of what they drive.

I’m not advocating that you drive like grandma, or that you drive something that’s slow as a slug or that looks like a piece of cheese. I’m just saying that you CAN save a buck by adding up some incremental changes. Every dollar that isn’t spent on gas is one that can be spent somewhere else.

It’s all about strategy and style …

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Honda Civic HX – MPG Project Slambo Preview

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Last spring, I ran a Kickstarter campaign to get a new video series off the ground. Ain’t Fuelin’ is a show unlike any other. At its core, it asks a simple question: is it possible to increase the fuel efficiency of an older vehicle and to what degree? But it wraps that question in a bigger idea, specifically: can you bring new life to old paint by infusing high tech on a low budget? Ain’t Fuelin’ draws inspiration from a host of big time shows that paved the way, from Overhaulin’ and Mythbusters to Pimp My Ride and Top Gear.

It’s been a long time coming …

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How Much Can You Save on Gas with a 40 MPG Car?

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Ready for a change? How about some change in your pocket?

When you swap out of a gas guzzler and into a fuel efficient car you will be able to calculate the savings at the end of every month. It all starts with the amount of driving you need to do each week. Try keeping track, starting on Monday when you leave for work. Write down the mileage figure shown on your odometer or reset your trip meter. Then make note of it on the following Monday (or on Sunday, when you park your ride for the night).

Add two zeros to that number, then divide it in half. If you’ve driven 300 miles in a week, for example, you’d add the two zeros to make it 30,000, and chop it down the middle. Drive 300 miles per week for fifty weeks out of the year, you’ll roll up roughly 15,000 miles. Drive 400 and you can call it 20,000.

If you own a vehicle that gets an average of 15 miles per gallon on average and drive 15,000 miles per year, you’ll pay over $4,000 per year for gasoline, with gas at $4 per gallon. If you switch into a vehicle that gets an average of 40 miles per gallon, you will spend approximately $1,500 per year, for a savings of just over $2,500 per year. That’s a serious chunk of change and may be enough to cover a significant piece of your car payment.

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Ain’t Fuelin’ Update: How Can I Increase My Gas Mileage?

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Fuel economy is the number one consideration of new car buyers these days, the surveys say (or so we’ve been told). But what about used car buyers? For every new car sold in America each year, three used cars change hands. Aren’t used car buyers similarly concerned about gas mileage? Of course they are … but no one seems to be doing anything about it. That’s why I’m rolling out my Ain’t Fuelin’ video series. I want to improve the fuel efficiency of half of the older cars on the road by ten percent through a mindful maintenance process.

I just finished testing the first vehicle for Ain’t Fuelin’, a 2010 Hyundai Sonata Limited, equipped with a 2.4-liter four-cylinder engine and automatic transmission. [Complete Hyundai Sonata Gas Mileage Charts for model years 1989 through 2013.] To bring folks up to speed, I ran an impromptu Google Hangout last night to share some observations and interesting stuff I’ve found while poking around on the Internet.

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