Decks, Driving, Deals

> When buying things, you really can get what they call is ‘taken.’ You think you are the smartest consumer there is.If they give you a contract, you think you are reading it over like you were an attorney. You read, you read more and finally you sign your name and the work is yours. You are so excited to get the home fixed up or to buy some furniture or you get something done on the outside of the house. We had a small deck porch put up. The first estimate as I read it over said there was a seven hundred dollar fee for getting the permit. I asked why we need a permit and was told by a remodeling company; they have to send a man down to the county back and forth and the amount for the county, even though it was a really small porch made out of expensive white deck wooding. I said that is too much and then I got another estimate and it was about half of that, so we chose them. I again read everything over and when he came back with the permit, he said the county said it was two feet too much and I who am usually more adept at deciphering this stuff said OK and he refunded me the measly amount of 120 dollars which was a silly refund. So he went forward, did the job and I went to inspect it and asked why the supporting boards were not white like the deck. He said you can paint it next year; they do not give the supporting boards in the deck material itself. I did not see that exclusion on the contract, but I had signed it thinking a deck is a deck and it will be all white. These supports were of the raw looking wood that one gets at a lumber store. It looked stupid. I called him and asked how much for it to be fixed white as it should have been in the first place. He said 1200 dollars and he was giving me a ‘bargain.’ I had to accept that amount even though we were frustrated and we balked. I resolved that I would read every last word and then again, before I got something new from a contractor. I thought I was getting this small deck/porch complete. Who in their right mind would have thought that the supporting beams or lumber would not match the flooring, the railing, the steps and the trim? Then we are looking at new cars. This you really have to watch because the salesman is very polite, very nice, very quick and very charming. They give you a price for what you want on the car, the color, the year and even if you want warming seats and touch screen controls. Then you see advertised that there is no finance charge for 48-60 months. Then you ask for any discounts and they come up with them and they are pretty good. The smiling salesman gives you a paper on the pricing and the payments and the taxes and says he does not give everyone these sheets, not to tell anyone, and here it is and it seems you think you are very special. You say you will come back, try the car out, sit in it and see how it drives and that will be next week. They call you several times to remind you to come next week. Then because you are extremely smart and know what is going on and you take the privileged sheet he gave you with the special prices you get because you are again special. You multiply the payments times 48 months and you see it comes to a total of more than you get when you do the dividing by hand or machine. You call him and he says yes, you are paying 2.9 percent because you got the incentives and your bill was lower and so then you must pay the finance fee. If you add it and subtract and multiply, you get about as much interest to be paid as the money given you off, because you are such nice people. There is a saying, you can fool some of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. It seems I was fooled once by the charming salesman from the remodeling company with my new white deck/porch and I had to come up with 1200 more dollars to get the holding lumber to be white and not painted white, but the white that matched the rest of the pretty white deck. It seems with car buying and it has been this way from when we bought our first new car in 1964 or so for the grand total of 3000 dollars, a Chevy Impala, all pretty and yellow. Oh how rich we felt when we went driving in it.Then several years later, we bought a Buick for 7000 dollars and I thought the whole world knew as we drove down the street, that we were indeed rich beyond words. I do not think in those long ago days, we looked over the financing too much. We were so grateful to kind of own it, we paid what they asked and we were thrilled we had the money to pay the monthly fee. As I mailed it each month to the bank or to the Buick folks, I thought I had come a long way from never owning one car, but now we had two. Oh how nice it feels to be ‘rich.’ Now I am older, a bit wiser and after the debacle of the 1200 extra dollars for the deck/porch; I read everything with a clear and smart mind and attitude. I see I am indeed paying finance charges because I got incentives on the bill and the amount they gave me in that is paying for the finance fees. I have always been extra smart in arithmetic, now called mathematics. Either word used is to be manipulated in something that should be a joy to buy. Of course, after you decide do you want incentives given to you to make the invoice less money and you pay interest for 48 months or do you desire the top price and you can say “I got this without paying any interest.” Both ways, your little twenty dollar calculator tells you the truth and as is said “the truth shall set you free.” Free to drive down the street in your gorgeous new car and to feel once again you are ‘rich’ because either way, you paid for the car what it sells for or any month you received interest off was already paid for by not getting the total amount reduced on the final bill. My Dad was fooled by his own brother when he loaned him lots of money in the early 1900’s because Dad had it then. The brother never paid Dad back when we needed it because he claimed he had none. For about a year when Dad was laid up with a broken back, Uncle Poor came over twice a month and he gave Dad a check for 25 dollars to help ease our finances. He use to wear what I called his poor suit, all frayed and out of style, to visit us and hand over the check. Dad felt sorry for him looking so bad in his horrible looking suit, he almost did not take the check; Mom said “Joe take it” and she would grab it out of Poor uncle’s hand because we needed it because Dad was out of work for six months. When Poor died, we found out he owned lots of property real estate downtown and he never told Dad of this, because he did not want to pay Dad back. We were stunned to learn how well to do he was. So I learned at an early age, you really cannot trust anyone, even relatives; you must get everything written down to make it legal. I thought with the deck/porch, it was all there in black and white and it was not and thus the 1200 more additional money. With the car, I am better informed because of the Internet and my wise old age. I try to have a moral to most of my stories. It is hard to find one for this article, but it could be: if you want a pretty and new car, you have two choices in the finance department. It is either A or B and they eventually add up to the same amount paid. If you want a white deck/porch, if you want it to be all white and pretty and nice to see as you pull up in that new car, do not trust a smiling and charming salesman, because he will tell you to paint the lumber holding it up next year and nowhere on the contract did he say he would have it all white. He said the deck, railing, steps etc.would be of white wood. Nowhere did it say the beams holding it up, would be white. Who knew to ask such a ‘silly question’ as to the color of the holding planks? Do you even think Einstein would have thought to ask that? Probably not. elita sohmer clayman