Saturday night my Dear One and I were up to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to celebrate brother T’s 50th birthday. It was a wonderful party and about a hundred people representing every phase of his life were there to offer felicitations.
I also found it an unnerving experience. T is the youngest sibling; the eldest among us, our sister P, is counting down the days to her 60th. T’s entry into his second half-century sunders us irrevocably from a past when we were people with only a future. Now we are become people with mostly a past, our lives defined more by accomplishments than possibilities.
The guests included several generations of our extended family, childhood friends, neighborhood pals, and colleagues. I met and re-met several classmates from T’s high school. Apparently I live on in at least one man’s mind in my avatar “Scary Ellen.”
By T’s teens, I had long since flown the parental nest. I most often encountered my brothers and their friends up at our summer place in New Hampshire or at my apartment where they seemed only to empty the refrigerator, produce mountains of laundry and dirty dishes, and court the attention of the DEA. My fuse was short enough and my nagging abrasive enough to make me fearsome to that crowd.
Remember when Barbara Bush described Geraldine Ferraro in these words: “I can’t say it but it rhymes with rich”? Some say she meant the word starting with “w”; others felt the word initialled “b” was foremost in her mind. Whatever the case, I am sure there are many out there who have lavished both epithets on me.
I returned from the excursion up I-95 and down memory lane to discover that the job my son Jay landed after six months of searching was imperiled by the imminent demise of his car’s transmission. When told that repairs were certain to exceed $3,000, we decided buying a new car now would cost less in the long run.
Jay had talked to a salesman after getting the bad news from the service department. The car they were looking at, a 2-door-and-hatchback, no-frills Hyundai Accent, was sensible and, in an abstract sense, affordable.
However, affordable is as affordable does so we prepared. We shook the money tree to see if any fruit lingered in the branches. We “built” the same car on the Hyundai website and received a quote from the same dealership with which we were already in negotiation.
After a quick test drive–no surprises there–we sat down to talk money. Having neutralized the outlandish charge for the floor mats by an increase in the trade-in and narrowed the distance between the cost of this car and the on-line quote, we thought were in reasonable territory. We had also heard all the anguish we could tolerate about anorexic profit margins and the tribulations of the automotive industry.
So we moved on to financing.
Dealerships are loath to identify the interest rate that the numbers represent. That’s because, as a manager at my local credit union pointed out to me, the dealerships come up with an amount to borrow then shop it around to find the bank offering the best deal. I suspect that means best deal for the dealership, not necessarily best deal for the buyer.
Let’s face it. The cost of the car is not the negotiated price; it’s the negotiated price plus the interest on the loan. The dealer hammers out a price with the customer then comes to an agreement with the bank that will hold the loan. The real profit margin is in the loan–whether you buy a car or a home.
Jay and I looked at a chart with different loan periods and different payments based on the life of the loan. Our magic number was $200 a month; they knew that. So they came up with a 72-month loan period with payments of just under $200 a month. Jay and I looked at each other. We said we wanted a $200 payment and a 66-month loan. Salesman returned from his boss with an offer of $218.50; we said $212; he and the boss came to $215 and suggested it was an amazing deal considering that the trade-in was headed for the junk yard. There was also some clamor about getting the new Accent off the lot lest another nickel of taxes should be levied. I circled the $212 and said this was the amount that would get the car off the lot. We got what we wanted. More or less. At any rate, the savings we won in simple interest represent about $594 over the life of the loan.
Afterwards Jay mentioned that the business manager and salesman both seemed to be struggling to keep a mask of cordiality. I believe his words were something to the effect of “those guys looked like they were thinking, ‘I can’t believe you brought your mother in to interfere with this purchase’.” What, they expected him to face the foe armed with something less than his most terrifying weapons?
When I e-mailed a teaching colleague about being “Scary Ellen,” he wrote back that T’s friend “is not the only person who calls you ‘Scary Ellen’ and your scaring days are not over.”
I guess not and I suspect the folks at the dealership agree. They’d probably just use Barbara Bush’s descriptor without her allusive delicacy.