Category: Uncategorized

I have been insured by USAA for car and home insurance for decades. When I bought my house 23 years ago my real estate agent asked if I had insurance yet, and I said USAA, and he replied “Well, you can’t do any better than that.” Every now and then I might shop to see if I am doing okay and lately USAA has gone up. Five years ago the monthly premium was $125 and now it is $215, insuring a car that is five years older and a home that is exactly the same. USAA has always issued a yearly dividend, but it is rarely very much ($27 last year). Lately, with Covid, they have been issuing special dividends because people are driving less and getting in few accidents, and therefore USAA isn’t paying out as many claims. I don’t drive that many miles anyway and again, the dividends aren’t much (3 payments totaling $61).
Continue reading “GEICO”

When I got the Mazda, I played around with a synthetic wax called Zaino. It turned out to be very labor intensive and kind of complex, but it did give very nice results when I did it. One of the neat aspects was there was a wax and you added a couple of drops of hardener to it right before applying it, which seemed like a pretty neat idea. Eventually the paint went bad anyway. The car sat out in the sun for 12 years straight, so not that surprising, and during the drought washing your car was banned, which didn’t help me keep up the Zaino coating. Jeb says it isn’t just sunlight, but dirt that digs into and destroys the paint and I wonder if parking near a MARTA station allowed it to pick up rail dust, fine steel particles, though I don’t know how far those travel.

So hoping to keep the Ford Escape for 10 years, I would like to protect its paint. I turned down a $600 paint protection package offered by the dealer which involves applying a coating that has to be reapplied every year anyway. In the past 12 years, synthetic waxes have gotten more advanced, easier to apply and maybe lasting a little longer. And there are still some who use real wax, carnuba wax, sometimes in conjunction with other coatings. Right now the rage is ceramic coating, in particular silicon dioxide (SiO2, which is quartz). It is scary to rub quartz on your car, but they also talk about nanoparticles, so the quartz is too fine to do anything I guess. Most products also have titanium dioxide. The ceramic coatings are supposed to last longer than synthetic waxes (now called sealants, since they aren’t wax), though you can use both. The detailers want really glossy results that bead water great, but what I really want is just good protection for the paint. The detailers use some expensive products by small companies and can save some money by buying in bulk, but one spray bottle of ceramic coating might be $40 and would maybe treat your car twice. That’s not horrible if it works, but it is expensive if it doesn’t, or if it is something I have a hard time applying correctly without a foam cannon, pressure washer, or electric buffer that most detailers already have. You can also get more consumer-oriented products at auto shops and even Walmart. Most products get some great reviews and some awful reviews, so it is hard to know what really works best. Ceramic coatings can last up to a year, but hardly anyone has evidence of them still beading water after more than four months, certainly not without regular washing, possible touchups, and keeping the car in a garage. While applying something once a year would be great, I could live with six months and washing every month or two in between.
Continue reading “Ceramic Coating”

When I got the new car, I didn’t even ask the dealer about trading in the Mazda, figuring they would offer very little, assuming they would even want it. I have been using Kelly Blue Book to track the declining value of the car over the years and it said my average trade-in price would be $3,854 while the average private party sale would be $5,658. I can’t actually get either of those because for condition, you can only put in “Fair” as the lowest, but the paint is oxidized and there is some damage to the back bumper from a minor fender bender. I got $700 for the fender bender and if I throw in $500 for the paint, I get to around $4400, which is what I would like to get for the car. One reason a 12 year old car like that is ranked that high is I have only put 58,000 miles on it.

I put an ad for the car on Nextdoor, but heard nothing. Looking at a few other cars there, it seemed like I was pricing it about right knowing I would get haggled down a little. To cast a wider net I thought I would put it on Autotrader, which is only $25. Looking there, my car seems like a real deal, but I realized most of the cars on Autotrader are from dealers and also may not be selling or they wouldn’t be there anymore. All of the Mazdas in my price range had way more miles on them. Anything with as many miles as my car was generally much newer and much more expensive. I tried comparing similar cars that are more popular like the Civic and Corolla and got about the same results. So I feel good, but who knows if anything on Autotrader is actually selling?
Continue reading “Used Car for Sale”

Last night after calling the salesman and saying I wanted the car, I went out to my car to get something and noticed the lights flashing when I unlocked the car didn’t look right. I got in the car and tried to start it and it wouldn’t turn over. Dead battery. I looked up whether I could roll start the car and since it is a manual transmission, this can be done. The internet recommended starting from second gear at about 10 mph and it worked like a charm as I coasted out of the driveway and down the street. I went around the block and parked again, but it stayed dead even after driving a half hour to the dealer, so I probably need a new battery. I think the Mazda knew it was about to be replaced.

After shopping earlier in the week, I decided to go in today and probably buy the car unless something fell through. It went pretty smoothly though. I could only put $5,000 down with a check and had to finance the rest or else wait a few days to move enough money into my checking to pay for the whole thing. Actually some of the discount was based on me financing with Ford Credit, so it worked out fine. I was hoping to get 0% or 1.9% financing, but to max out the discount, I had to pay market rates based on my credit rating, so the interest rate was 4.15%. I might have let 1.9% ride figuring it is less than inflation, but I will probably go ahead and pay off the loan if I have to pay 4.15%. It is a 4-year loan.
Continue reading “Ford Escape LE Sport Hybrid”

Earlier in the year, I was able to make a little money selling some gold coins back to the online dealers that I bought them from several years ago. In January, the spot price was $1570 per ounce and silver was $18.30 per ounce. I sold two 1-ounce gold coins and 40 ounces of silver bars.

Then in July, the price of gold had gone up to $1800 per ounce, so I sold two more gold coins, telling myself that if it went to $2,000 per ounce, I would sell two of my last three gold coins and keep the the very last one as a souvenir, paid for with gains from the other coins (a 1922 Double Eagle, which surprisingly don’t have a huge premium).

A couple of weeks later, silver shot up to $20 an ounce and I figured I could make about a 20% gain on some things I had that were not favorites (a bunch of silver bullion coins from the UK that I shouldn’t have bought, let alone 40 of them, plus a tube of 20 US silver eagle coins, my last 10 ounce bar, and some rounds (privately made coins). 75 ounces altogether, it made for a pretty heavy box (over 5 pounds).

Continue reading “Selling Silver”