Some of you read Mercedes and see $. It was a 2003 kompressor and is probably worth less then $10,000. Closer to $6000.

 

In 2008?

In 2008?

 

How many miles and can I get a Carfax on it?

Oh good God, please point out to where I made such a dumb claim. Log on to any car sales website, you will find dozens of each of those models to choose from. Both of those models are regularly on the top ten in sales in numerous years. There are other similar low cost, highly reliable cars also. What is the problem with that? I have even heard Dave Ramsey recommend a similar strategy to those to get back on their feet.

 

When a contract position at a company I worked at stopped renewing contractors when revenue took a down turn and left me unemployed, I seriously thought of trading out my car (which is paid off) for something cheaper to have the difference to hold me over for a while, I decided against doing so since my research determined my car was not worth much in the first place so the trade off would not yield very much. I then turned around and started talking to realtors I knew about selling my house and possibly moving in with a parent. All three realtors suggested that the housing downturn (at that time) was not looking to rebound anytime soon and recommended making selling my home as an absolute last resort. I then looked at possibly liquidating my retirement to pay off my house to eliminate my mortgage and just suffer the tax consequences. While looking into this, the job offer from a print company came about so I didn't need to take any action but I was ready to make such of move.

 

That's you. She ain't you.

Look we all know people abuse the system, this doesn't seem to be the case.

It was an interesting story.

 

Not sure why the slobbering praise of Obama at the end. The extension did pass with Congressional approval.

 

You can find a story that is uplifting. Unfortunately the system rewards out-of-wedlock childbirths and is very institutionalized and used forever in certain places as a permanent lifetime system. The system does not necessarily help those working their way back out of holes as pointed out above. There is nothing wrong with safety nets - so long as they do not become hammocks. And the safety net should able to be used as a ladder as in this story.

 

I have taken WIC/food stamp coupons from customers when working as a cashier in a grocery store years ago. In a suburban setting. Luckily I never saw put-downs or meanness that I can remember. It was more feeling bad for anyone using them for the first time and explaining what was 'covered' and what was not and going through their receipt to show them that. WIC only covered certain baby/mother things I believe. Regular food stamps could not be used for anything taxable if I remember correctly. Occasionally someone would want to use food stamps for cigarettes. Those discussions were usually the most lively when explaining that was not allowed.

So instead of keeping a car that is paid off you want her to sell the car and accumulate more debt? You're assuming that she'd be able to find a car less expensive that would be reliable and not require money being put into the car.

 

And that she'd get at or above fair market value on the sale. Or that she would have no problems that would come from the "in between" period of selling the old one and buying a new one (unless she could afford to just buy another on the hope that hers would sell).

 

It sounds good in theory, but financially, that seems like a huge risk for someone who wasn't going through the most predictable income or fully acclimated to the adjustments they were making.

Doesn't stop her from selling it to buy a reliable Toyota Corolla or Honda Civic and keep the difference and save on gas and insurance.

 

Again not saying she should not collect benefits but if you have luxuries, it is generally prudent to start selling them off unless you are confident your economic down turn will be short.

 

 

I understand what you're saying, but I also think it's fair to say that her and her husband had very marketable skills, that they were unfortunate to have bought during the housing bubble, and that you don't really count on having twins that require expensive neonatal care right off when you think, "we're married, we're pregnant, and we've planned having this child".

 

Not saying they shouldn't have used more forethought, because it seems to be fair to say that they could have been living comfortable but at the same time far more modestly and saving up to prevent against the worst case scenario kind of thing that happened to them. It wasn't just wishing on a star to think they'd recover.

 

Given that, I would think that they're the kind of people who probably investigated selling it, but, in the long term, thought, why make another bad financial move by selling a high priced asset at below market value and replace it with one which ends up costing more in the long run?

 

I'd imagine that for someone whose bought and paid off a new Mercedes in 5 years or has been able to purchase a $200K+ home, it'd be easy to be swindled by someone's promise to sell a "reliable" Civic that they'd end up spending just as much on repairs for over the course of a year or wouldn't really have much knowledge on how to service and take care of it like they'd need to.

 

Not saying that isn't their own fault in many senses, just that the car seemed to be the one thing they had that was like Tom Hanks' unopened package in Castaway. Things were bad for them, but they weren't at rock bottom either. They seem like people who are productive members of society, I'd imagine that they've more than paid their share into the system to compensate for the safety net that they actually ended up using, so I personally can't be too hard on them for the decision to keep something fairly nice, yet still functional like a vehicle.

 

I'm also like Woodsrider and guessing that a five plus year old Mercedes isn't really going to command the kind of money people are thinking, especially during an economic downtown like the one at the time.

How many miles and can I get a Carfax on it?

 

:laugh:

 

Man, too close to April 15th for me or I'd do it for you.

 

I'm thinking for a small claim and in certain proceedings (e.g., insolvency exceptions, but don't quote me on that)... the IRS is probably satisfied with taking the Kelly Blue Book value as one point of reference for the worth.

 

 

Seriously though, I think there's a ton of overestimation for the financial leverage you'd gain by flipping a car that you've already paid off to something more affordable during a horrible economic recession. If you could make lots of money doing things like this, people wouldn't have been having homes foreclosed on, etc.

...I drove my Mercedes to pick up food stamps

 

This is what happened when I drove my Mercedes to pick up food stamps - The Washington Post

 

I thought this was a very interesting essay. One that shows that it'd not just "lazy" people who need help and benefit from social aid programs. It 's also a great example of why we should never judge on circumstantial clues.

 

My personal experience working with clients who've been in and out of the system for years versus some who I've gotten comfortable enough with during intake interviews that I'd just asked, "so, uhhhh... if you don't mind me asking, how did you end up here" because they weren't like 95% of the people at the homeless shelter (and I'm not saying that was a bad thing). It's just a thing that opened my eyes to (at least on some level) the failures of an imperfect system. One kid was younger than me, and had been raised/living with an elderly family member who'd died when he was overseas and the guy was coming back home with no family that he'd speak of still living and the house he'd been living in foreclosed on.

 

There are people who game "the system" like a niche market and just take it for what it is. They know small tricks to qualifying. When you are interviewing someone for a social security claim and they're seemingly very, very knowledgeable about the whole process, it can come through.

 

There are people like this woman seems to be who'll need to rely on "the system" for a short time, yet have no experience with it and wind up bogged down in the bureaucracy of things instead of getting in and out. That's how they end up driving a Mercedes to pick up their assistance.

 

Those are overly general and obviously don't apply to everyone, but after two years of doing it, you kind of get a quick detector for people who are or aren't "lifers" in the system. Not saying there's anything wrong with people who are lifers because some people really couldn't function without it, but that there are also people that give you the impression that they might be gaming the system pretty hard and are satisfied with doing that, just like there are some who'll use it as a stepping stone and be in and out as quick as they can.

 

Not really a good answer to a lot of those questions.

 

The biggest thing those experiences have taught me were dealing with people and not being too presumptive about other's situations. Just as soon as you think you’ve confirmed a suspicion about them, things can really flip.

:laugh:

 

Man, too close to April 15th for me or I'd do it for you.

 

I'm thinking for a small claim and in certain proceedings (e.g., insolvency exceptions, but don't quote me on that)... the IRS is probably satisfied with taking the Kelly Blue Book value as one point of reference for the worth.

 

 

Seriously though, I think there's a ton of overestimation for the financial leverage you'd gain by flipping a car that you've already paid off to something more affordable during a horrible economic recession. If you could make lots of money doing things like this, people wouldn't have been having homes foreclosed on, etc.

 

Not talking about making a lot of money. Talking about getting out of something that costs a lot of money to keep, getting into something less expensive to operate, and having a few thousand dollars to help you out. I'm in the camp that you do what you have to do.

Not talking about making a lot of money. Talking about getting out of something that costs a lot of money to keep, getting into something less expensive to operate, and having a few thousand dollars to help you out. I'm in the camp that you do what you have to do.

 

I know what you're saying. The point I was trying to make was that I'm not really sure that the economy at that given time really a seller's market for trying to flip high ticket luxury items. Lots and lots of people were doing some belt-tightening and people weren't really spending on those kinds of things, even though tons of people were probably trying to sell them.

 

I'll put it like this. I see no difference in them holding onto it for another year and letting it ride out and paying more taxes, etc. back into the system later once they're out of the woods than I would if the couple of thousand they might have made on flipping it just came out of the system like it did.

 

Huge disparity in commanding a salary that's $120K per year one month and down to $25K two months later. That $2000 or $3000 that we're speculating they might have earned isn't really a lot when your talking about the disparity between those numbers and the likelihood it evens back out.

 

It's different if we're assuming someone made them an offer they couldn't refuse or that they'd have been stupid to refuse, but they seem like smart people and there isn't really a lot of evidence that there was something like that.

 

If the system worked for everyone like it did for them from the time they entered it to the time they left it, then we'd have an economy that's growing exponentially and we'd mandate everyone rotate shifts in taking off and doing like they did to balance everything out.

 

I know that's only possible in theory and in no way practical, but it kind of illustrates that these are the kind of people who, when we're doing hedonic calculus as a society, actually could give a somewhat symbiotic benefit to the relationship between them and society.

I don't have the same story as she, but I sure can understand what she's saying.

 

Me? If I'd ever had a car that was reliable I'd have kept it too, because it was reliable. A used car is always a risk, unless you can afford something like a certified pre-owned, and those aren't very cheap. I've had $500-$5000 cars in my life. The only difference in the $500 car and the $5000 car is you can actually tell there are issues when you drive away in a $500 car. $5000 cars (in my experience) are fine for a few months, and then they start nickel and dimeing you to death, with a few unexpected huge chunks thrown in from time to time for good measure.

 

If the Mercedes was the husband's pride and joy, and it was paid off, keep that sucker! First of all, most people I know with Mercedes take good care of them, even folks with early 70's Mercedes. If it was well maintained previously, it shouldn't have any major repairs. The couple obviously weren't planning on being "lifers". Why not ride out the storm until it either got too bad and they HAD to resort to selling it, or things got better.

 

I think that's part of the point that no one wants to acknowledge. We want to make judgements on what our outside "objective" opinion is. Life is a series of choices we each have to make, and circumstances we each have to deal with. There are no "right" ways, or "wrong" ways. We each deal with the hand we're dealt the best way we can. Does that mean there aren't missteps along the way or more curveballs can't be thrown. But we EACH have to make the best decisions we can given the circumstances we're in.

 

And, having started out way below the poverty line, and having made decisions I've been judged harshly for, I can tell you...you have to make the best decision for YOUR family, the outsiders be damned.

It's interesting that the article is about how she was being judged by others.......

= "I'm judging you"

I would say judging is going on in this thread by each and every poster.

Information like this fires people up and makes the judgemental attitudes harsher. Half a trillion in improper payments over 5 years?

 

Improper payments by federal government top $100B