Experian Automotive said the number of new cars bought with financing rose to more than 86 percent (Source: may be paywalled) in the first quarter of this year. The average loan amount topped $30,000, with the average term for a new-car loan in the 68-month range -- some stretch as long as seven years.
When I bought my last new car three years ago, I financed the whole thing at 1% for five years.
Same here - for my last two cars. I needed some credit activity, and at around 1 percent, it's almost like free money. Probably sounds weird to many, borrowing money when you don't need to, but my other investments make much more, and there's that need to show I borrowed money in case I do need to.
This is no longer the case. A quality, well built Camry, Civic, BMW or Accord loses about 10% when you drive it off the lot. Some American cars as well as some high end cars on the other hand do lose a lot more of their value on possession sometimes even more than 25%.
Then again, if a person buys a car for it's resale value, maybe a bicycle makes more financial sense.
It is dumb to buy a new car. It loses 25% of the value the moment you take possession. Then rusts and loses value continuously. You can get fantastic almost as good as new car, one or two years old, some 30% cheaper.
As well as more maintenance on the used. This is just like the old chestnut about always keep the used car because your maintenance will be lower than the payments on a new car. Yeah, that's true enough.
But it eventually gets to be a major pain in the ass. Different folks have differernt levels of what they will accept. Mine's about the 10 year mark.
Honey, the car needs a new engine
Honey the car needs a new transmission!
The garage called, we need new struts, brake rotors and a catalytic converter for inspection!
So I buy 1 -2 year old used. And if I spend a little more than the smart folks, I'll just write that off to the price of reliability.
Another possibility, if the average family with an average of 3.5 members got rid of their average cell phone plan that costs an average of $60/mo per phone they would save an average of $210/mo which would let them afford the median priced automobile.
I think the average family worried about affording a car has a much cheaper cell phone plan than that.
Nope. I know a fellow who works as a waiter in an iHop gets every tax break imaginable, and he's spending over 500 a month on phones.
A lot of folks do not understand how addicted to the things that people are.
A lot of the new cars look the same to me. All pill shaped ovals on wheels. The price doesn't help either when I've been looking around at cars recently. I've found myself going to classic car sites looking for 60's, 70's, and 80's cars all fixed up like new. I miss the simplicity of hand crank windows.
Un huh. My cars I owned in the 70s are noe just as expensive as new ones.
But even more seriously, folks, I think we need to rethink our entire philosophy of reproduction. There are evolutionary reasons that we are strongly driven to have as many children as possible.
Yeah, but who wants to spend time raising kids when you could be doing interesting things in VR?
Also, last I checked, US fertility was right at the replacement rate, but since then it has dropped off a cliff, largely due to the economy: people cannot afford to have children any more.
That, plus the male of the species is considered at the very best, a latent child molester and more likely assumed to actually be one.
And if you follow the links in the story, you can see there is a lot of pre judgement of males.
And I fear the problem will only get worse with time - in the meantime having children opens the lesser partner to a whole world of problems. So a prudent male will just save their money, stay single and childless. There are plenty of things to do in life besides having children.
If you don't believe in the green religion, then your Air Conditioner isn't sinful and you don't need to look backward.
Pah! You'd call my house green - super insulated with the most efficient gas furnace on the market. All paid back and we're banking the payoff in investments.
And just between us chachalacas, I'm spending a hellava lot less money than most people who seem to find that they'd rather bitch about those commie treehugging fuckers and their socialist insulation than save a little money. That Pink pather insulation? More like Pinko Panther!
But go ahead - it's good to see the people with the courage of their convictions throwing their money away. Because it's the patriotic thing to do. Think Brown!
I dunno, look how many people on Slashdot claim that any reduction in energy consumption is a downgrade in living standards because it means less A/C and heating. They seem to have forgotten recent history and not noticed that many developed nations have found a better way, because to them temperature is controlled by a little knob on the wall.
I have a highly insulated house - which uses around 200 dollars of heating a year.in the northeast US. And that isn't a typo. I havehave a super efficient gas furnace that extracts so much heat, the chimney is made of PVC plastic. And I love to note that I have a real fireplace with a heat collector. All the better for the missus and me to snuggle up near on cold winter nights.
And I have some nice big windows as well. 2 inch air gap and they insulate very well.
I do have to run an AC in my home office because of the 6 computers and several radios, but that's just the cost of my activities.
We do use the AC to remove some humidity from the whole house when the levels are high.Sometimes here the levels can get so high the floors sweat
But the point is, I did the math, and doing very good insulation and many of the other things to insulate and gain efficiency for your house isn't as expensive as many think and dunno whether it is that some people are easily swayed by naysayers or what, but while super insulating might not be a good for an office, but my lifestyle is actually better for my energy reduction, because I have more thin green to spend, not going to heat and cool very much.
And these improvements are long since paid off. That new furnace? Only took 3 years.
But in a land where some folks think that never turning off your P.C pickup truck is a mark of patriotism, things like saving money by investing in things to avoid sending green to the fuel companies just don't seem right.
Given the abundance of mosquitoes where I live, I'm completely certain I prefer my AC to the "creativity" of sitting on the porch feeding the bloodsucking bastards.
Also, sleeping (or trying) while soaked in sweat isn't particularly good for my creativity afterwards. So IMO thanks god for AC.
Pretty much this. Lots of nights were too hot for sleep, and days could get severely nasty. You can only do so much cooling with fans and air circulation, especially when you are trying to circulate 100 degree air to cool the interior of a building.
Then there are computers. Everywhere in offices, and obviously in server rooms They tend to not work when they get too hot. and when you remove the heat they generate, they function pretty well as heaters.
Perhaps the authors of the story can give us hints about how citizens of the 1890's kept their server farms cool?
As summer heat builds, more people will rely on air conditioning units to keep cool.
.
However, before air conditioning existed, people had to be creative when trying to stay comfortable in sweltering conditions.
Sure - and for some reason or other air conditioning caught on.
The biggest need for air conditioning is in lowering the humidity in say the Northeast. It can be miserable at 70 degrees some times. And hitting a dew point is always fun.
I'm a little surprised I haven't seen any comments about server farms. Lose the temp control in one of them, and how we gonna check our Facebook? I'm not certain how we can run those without air conditioning. Perhaps digging deep pits to collect area average temp air, but hey - what's a little radon?
For while Air conditioning might have mnde the human race lazy, the modern world wouldn't exist without it - including the computers we yekk at those dam kids on our lawns here on slashdot.
You've never actually been to the north have you? Businesses in the north almost never shut down for any reason related to weather. I've lived in the Midwest much of my life and we just know how to deal with snow.
Hey stop it! Sorry southern folks, the frozen tundra of anything north of Maryland is just nature trying to kill you. Did you know 80 percent of people up north only have two fingers and a thumb left on each hand, the rest are gone to frostbite.
If you are ourside the house during the daily 12 inch blizzard, if you don't get back inside in 5 minutes, you are dead - that's a fact.
Winter insurance costs ten times as much, because every car on the road skids out of control on the 8 months of the year the roads are covered with glare ice. You can look that up.
And do not attempt to pee outside, the subzero temps start freezing your wizz at ground level, and rapidly work it's way upwards, you can get a peesickle catheterization unless you stop really quick. Makes peeing on an electric fence look like a walk in the park.
So stay down south, good citizens - where you are safe and warm, and all is well. You have been warned.
Jeeze, here I am having to run damage control on you again sjbe!
Since most music is not made by record labels, why do people seek out the music produced by labels? Apparently there is something of value there,
Time largely. I don't have all day to research out music that I would like to hear. So for years, we trusted that the major labels would sift through the dross and bring to us good music.
But this is no longer true. Modern Pop music is pretty people who may or may not be able to sing. Dancing is more important to pop music today than music. Coupled with ADHD hooks and psychotic lyrics, it's obvious that the trust is broken. And this trend of marketing to 12 year olds, either in age or intellect, has gone on much longer than trends in music usually do.
There are many reasons to have zero sympathy for the music industry. You don't have to be a kid to appreciate that the labels are ultimately reaping what they've sown.
They really are the real thieves here.
It would be impossible to launch an industry invigorating service like MTV, or VH1 today. Dunno whether the coke addled their brains somewhere along the line, but today's music industry leaders are worried about every play garnering money for the industry leaders.
And it isn't working. It might have something to do with the requirements shifting from musical talent to pretty pretty, with autotune making everyone's voice sound the same, with ADHD hook ridden music, with scizophrenic lyrics that make 1970's disco lyrics sound like physics dissertations. And altogether too much of the music is so self similar that there isn't much purpose buying much of it.
I've got very eclectic music tastes, and have always found examples of different genres that I enjoy, be it , Baroque, Viking death metal, hip hop, industrial, country, folk or prog rock, or Phillip Glass.
I can't find any examples of this pop crap worth a shit.
Slashdot Mirror
I there nothing we can't blame him for?
It makes life easier for the dull among us.
Though, with all the money that's been printed over the past few years, minimum wage should be $50/hour now.
That was paying for the emergency appropriations in the early part of the century. You know - war on the reverse layaway plan.
Experian Automotive said the number of new cars bought with financing rose to more than 86 percent (Source: may be paywalled) in the first quarter of this year. The average loan amount topped $30,000, with the average term for a new-car loan in the 68-month range -- some stretch as long as seven years.
When I bought my last new car three years ago, I financed the whole thing at 1% for five years.
Same here - for my last two cars. I needed some credit activity, and at around 1 percent, it's almost like free money. Probably sounds weird to many, borrowing money when you don't need to, but my other investments make much more, and there's that need to show I borrowed money in case I do need to.
This is no longer the case. A quality, well built Camry, Civic, BMW or Accord loses about 10% when you drive it off the lot. Some American cars as well as some high end cars on the other hand do lose a lot more of their value on possession sometimes even more than 25%.
Then again, if a person buys a car for it's resale value, maybe a bicycle makes more financial sense.
It is dumb to buy a new car. It loses 25% of the value the moment you take possession. Then rusts and loses value continuously. You can get fantastic almost as good as new car, one or two years old, some 30% cheaper.
As well as more maintenance on the used. This is just like the old chestnut about always keep the used car because your maintenance will be lower than the payments on a new car. Yeah, that's true enough.
But it eventually gets to be a major pain in the ass. Different folks have differernt levels of what they will accept. Mine's about the 10 year mark.
Honey, the car needs a new engine
Honey the car needs a new transmission!
The garage called, we need new struts, brake rotors and a catalytic converter for inspection!
So I buy 1 -2 year old used. And if I spend a little more than the smart folks, I'll just write that off to the price of reliability.
Another possibility, if the average family with an average of 3.5 members got rid of their average cell phone plan that costs an average of $60/mo per phone they would save an average of $210/mo which would let them afford the median priced automobile.
I think the average family worried about affording a car has a much cheaper cell phone plan than that.
Nope. I know a fellow who works as a waiter in an iHop gets every tax break imaginable, and he's spending over 500 a month on phones.
A lot of folks do not understand how addicted to the things that people are.
A lot of the new cars look the same to me. All pill shaped ovals on wheels. The price doesn't help either when I've been looking around at cars recently. I've found myself going to classic car sites looking for 60's, 70's, and 80's cars all fixed up like new. I miss the simplicity of hand crank windows.
Un huh. My cars I owned in the 70s are noe just as expensive as new ones.
A Japanese sex festival was over prematurely as herds of virtual porn fans caused overcrowding fears.
Are they certain that is really why the festival was over... uhh.. prematurely?
The octopus got tired.
But even more seriously, folks, I think we need to rethink our entire philosophy of reproduction. There are evolutionary reasons that we are strongly driven to have as many children as possible.
Yeah, but who wants to spend time raising kids when you could be doing interesting things in VR?
Note that Japanese Fertility Rate is waaaay under the replacement rate.
Also, last I checked, US fertility was right at the replacement rate, but since then it has dropped off a cliff, largely due to the economy: people cannot afford to have children any more.
That, plus the male of the species is considered at the very best, a latent child molester and more likely assumed to actually be one.
http://madamenoire.com/205878/...
And if you follow the links in the story, you can see there is a lot of pre judgement of males. And I fear the problem will only get worse with time - in the meantime having children opens the lesser partner to a whole world of problems. So a prudent male will just save their money, stay single and childless. There are plenty of things to do in life besides having children.
Not all that certain it is a good concept in the long run.
First world problems
Recently learned it's now Dr Methane. Bet someone gave him an honorary music doctorate.
And he has an album out! https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
If this constitutes "news for nerds", I can't even comprehend what an active embrace of ignorance would look like.
Tell me of a good way to run server farms without air conditioning.
If you don't believe in the green religion, then your Air Conditioner isn't sinful and you don't need to look backward.
Pah! You'd call my house green - super insulated with the most efficient gas furnace on the market. All paid back and we're banking the payoff in investments.
And just between us chachalacas, I'm spending a hellava lot less money than most people who seem to find that they'd rather bitch about those commie treehugging fuckers and their socialist insulation than save a little money. That Pink pather insulation? More like Pinko Panther!
But go ahead - it's good to see the people with the courage of their convictions throwing their money away. Because it's the patriotic thing to do. Think Brown!
I dunno, look how many people on Slashdot claim that any reduction in energy consumption is a downgrade in living standards because it means less A/C and heating. They seem to have forgotten recent history and not noticed that many developed nations have found a better way, because to them temperature is controlled by a little knob on the wall.
I have a highly insulated house - which uses around 200 dollars of heating a year.in the northeast US. And that isn't a typo. I havehave a super efficient gas furnace that extracts so much heat, the chimney is made of PVC plastic. And I love to note that I have a real fireplace with a heat collector. All the better for the missus and me to snuggle up near on cold winter nights.
And I have some nice big windows as well. 2 inch air gap and they insulate very well.
I do have to run an AC in my home office because of the 6 computers and several radios, but that's just the cost of my activities.
We do use the AC to remove some humidity from the whole house when the levels are high.Sometimes here the levels can get so high the floors sweat
But the point is, I did the math, and doing very good insulation and many of the other things to insulate and gain efficiency for your house isn't as expensive as many think and dunno whether it is that some people are easily swayed by naysayers or what, but while super insulating might not be a good for an office, but my lifestyle is actually better for my energy reduction, because I have more thin green to spend, not going to heat and cool very much.
And these improvements are long since paid off. That new furnace? Only took 3 years.
But in a land where some folks think that never turning off your P.C pickup truck is a mark of patriotism, things like saving money by investing in things to avoid sending green to the fuel companies just don't seem right.
Given the abundance of mosquitoes where I live, I'm completely certain I prefer my AC to the "creativity" of sitting on the porch feeding the bloodsucking bastards.
Also, sleeping (or trying) while soaked in sweat isn't particularly good for my creativity afterwards. So IMO thanks god for AC.
Pretty much this. Lots of nights were too hot for sleep, and days could get severely nasty. You can only do so much cooling with fans and air circulation, especially when you are trying to circulate 100 degree air to cool the interior of a building.
Then there are computers. Everywhere in offices, and obviously in server rooms They tend to not work when they get too hot. and when you remove the heat they generate, they function pretty well as heaters.
Perhaps the authors of the story can give us hints about how citizens of the 1890's kept their server farms cool?
As summer heat builds, more people will rely on air conditioning units to keep cool.
. However, before air conditioning existed, people had to be creative when trying to stay comfortable in sweltering conditions.
Sure - and for some reason or other air conditioning caught on.
The biggest need for air conditioning is in lowering the humidity in say the Northeast. It can be miserable at 70 degrees some times. And hitting a dew point is always fun.
I'm a little surprised I haven't seen any comments about server farms. Lose the temp control in one of them, and how we gonna check our Facebook? I'm not certain how we can run those without air conditioning. Perhaps digging deep pits to collect area average temp air, but hey - what's a little radon?
For while Air conditioning might have mnde the human race lazy, the modern world wouldn't exist without it - including the computers we yekk at those dam kids on our lawns here on slashdot.
You've never actually been to the north have you? Businesses in the north almost never shut down for any reason related to weather. I've lived in the Midwest much of my life and we just know how to deal with snow.
Hey stop it! Sorry southern folks, the frozen tundra of anything north of Maryland is just nature trying to kill you. Did you know 80 percent of people up north only have two fingers and a thumb left on each hand, the rest are gone to frostbite.
If you are ourside the house during the daily 12 inch blizzard, if you don't get back inside in 5 minutes, you are dead - that's a fact.
Winter insurance costs ten times as much, because every car on the road skids out of control on the 8 months of the year the roads are covered with glare ice. You can look that up.
And do not attempt to pee outside, the subzero temps start freezing your wizz at ground level, and rapidly work it's way upwards, you can get a peesickle catheterization unless you stop really quick. Makes peeing on an electric fence look like a walk in the park.
So stay down south, good citizens - where you are safe and warm, and all is well. You have been warned.
Jeeze, here I am having to run damage control on you again sjbe!
Since most music is not made by record labels, why do people seek out the music produced by labels? Apparently there is something of value there,
Time largely. I don't have all day to research out music that I would like to hear. So for years, we trusted that the major labels would sift through the dross and bring to us good music.
But this is no longer true. Modern Pop music is pretty people who may or may not be able to sing. Dancing is more important to pop music today than music. Coupled with ADHD hooks and psychotic lyrics, it's obvious that the trust is broken. And this trend of marketing to 12 year olds, either in age or intellect, has gone on much longer than trends in music usually do.
Try searching for 'Mr Methane' to get you started.
Mister Methane stinks.
There are many reasons to have zero sympathy for the music industry. You don't have to be a kid to appreciate that the labels are ultimately reaping what they've sown.
They really are the real thieves here.
It would be impossible to launch an industry invigorating service like MTV, or VH1 today. Dunno whether the coke addled their brains somewhere along the line, but today's music industry leaders are worried about every play garnering money for the industry leaders.
And it isn't working. It might have something to do with the requirements shifting from musical talent to pretty pretty, with autotune making everyone's voice sound the same, with ADHD hook ridden music, with scizophrenic lyrics that make 1970's disco lyrics sound like physics dissertations. And altogether too much of the music is so self similar that there isn't much purpose buying much of it.
I've got very eclectic music tastes, and have always found examples of different genres that I enjoy, be it , Baroque, Viking death metal, hip hop, industrial, country, folk or prog rock, or Phillip Glass.
I can't find any examples of this pop crap worth a shit.
Yeah, nobody actually WRITES music, it's just people on stage singing whatever and playing random notes.
Not really - it only sounds that way.
MADD lost all credibility 20 years ago. They are nothing but a means for their executives to get rich.
MADD always had an undercurrent of the Women's Christian Temperance Union in them.
They would like to go back to the days of prohibition, and reinvigorating organized crime.
What's the solution then?
Tax cuts*, duh.
Banning Gay marriage.
Banning Uber and forcing us all to go back to the discriminatory, fraud-ridden, unreliable taxi system is just not an option.
In the not too distant future, Uber will be discriminatory, fraud ridden, and unreliable. Unless they become the only monopoly that avoided it.
Enjoy