My most recent used car purchase

Step 1: Figure out what you want
Start by making a list of everything you need and want in a car. This is an initial wish list, so you can include anything and everything. Appropriate items for your list might be: make and model, color, size, safety features, reliability ratings, gas mileage, air conditioning, stereo system, etc…

Step 2: Prioritize your wish list
Go through your list and order it by priority, putting the one thing you absolutely cannot live without at the top, the second most important item should be number two and so on until every item on your list is assigned a value. This will help you zero in on the right car for your needs.

Step 3: Make a list of cars that meet your needs
When I organized my wish list, my top priorities were: safety, reliability, and fuel efficiency. I also needed a car that comfortably seated a family of four, had air conditioning, and was not beige (my husband hates beige). There were other nice-to-haves on my list, but I focused on the top five when I started my research. I consulted Consumer Reports to get a reliable assessment of different makes and models of used cars. Consumer Reports ranks cars according to safety, reliability, size, fuel efficiency, and price range, so I was able to quickly come up with a list of cars that met my needs.

Step 4: Figure out what you can afford
Look at your savings account and figure out how much money you can afford to spend IN CASH for your new used car. Whether it’s $500, $5,000, or $15,000, write that number at the top of your prioritized list and commit to getting a car for that price. Do not take out a loan to buy more car than you can afford. This is a difficult goal to stick to, especially when you start seeing the pretty cars you can get with just a few hundred, or thousand, dollars more. You’ll be tempted to take out a loan, but try to stay committed to a cash deal so that you aren’t saddled with monthly car payments. if you don’t have enough cash, and your current car is still drivable, consider saving up for a few more months.

Step 5: Zero in on the car that meets your needs and fits your budget
Go to Kelly Blue Book or Edmunds and look up each car on your list. These free online resources are industry-standard. They will tell you exactly what you should expect to pay for a used car. The main factors that determine the price of a used car are: make, model, year, mileage, and condition. When I did my search, I started with the make/model, chose “good” condition, and then looked for the “year” and mileage that I could afford.

Step 6: Start shopping
Search classified ad sites like Craigslist, local newspapers and other sources for the make, model, and year you are looking for. Remember, buyer beware. Keep the following in mind when buying a used car directly from a seller:

Step 7: Close the deal
Once you’ve identified the car you want, you’ll need to do the following to ensure it’s a good purchase:

When it comes to something as important to you and your family as your mode of transportation, you don’t want to take any chances. When preparing to buy a used car, do your homework. This way, you’re getting a reliable used car at a price you can afford.

Step One: Prepare the Crust
My advice, buy pre-made whole wheat pizza dough ($1.29 at Trader Joe’s). If you are a bread baker and yeasty dough is second nature to you, go ahead and make it yourself, but for the rest of us the pre-made dough is a great value and saves load of time. Take your dough out of the fridge ahead of time and bring it up to room temperature. Sprinkle flour liberally on the pizza pan and roll the dough out to a nice round shape. Pull and squeeze the ends to build up the crust around the edge.

Step Two: Doctor the Sauce
If you don’t have a stash of homemade sauce handy for this next step, here’s what I want you to do. 1) do not feel guilty. 2) do not attempt to make sauce now. Our objective is fast and easy. We are going to supplement your store-bought jar of pizza sauce with fresh ingredients that will fool other adults at your pizza dinner party into thinking that you made the sauce from scratch. Add one clove of fresh garlic (crushed in a garlic press) and two tablespoons of fresh oregano leaves to 1 1/4 cups store-bought pizza sauce and mix. Pour your sorta homemade sauce onto the crust, and ask your kid helpers to spread it evenly with the back of a spoon.

Step Three: Add Toppings
Add any toppings you like before adding the basil. I like to put slices of pre-cooked sausage on my pizza. Wash fresh basil leaves (12 or more) and place them on the pizza. Grate one or two cups mozzarella cheese and have you kid helpers spread it on the pizza. Finish it off with a sprinkling of grated parmesan cheese.

Step Four: Bake and Serve
Put pizza into an oven pre-heated to 450 degrees and bake for 15 minutes or until crust is golden brown. Let cool for 5 – 10 minutes and serve.

Ingredients
Pre-made whole wheat pizza dough ($1.29 at Trader Joe’s)
Small jar of pizza sauce (or homemade sauce if you have it)
1 clove garlic
2 tablespoons fresh oregano leaves
Fresh basil, 12+ whole leaves washed
Additional toppings: sausage, olives, peppers, etc… (optional)
1 ½ cups grated mozzarella
Sprinkling of grated parmesan cheese

Fortunately, visionary start-ups like Lumni, founded by native Colombians Felipe Vergara (a Miami consultant and entrepreneur) and Miguel Palacios, assistant professor of finance at Vanderbilt, re-envisioning the student loan. They are introducing the concept of micro-loans into the realm of college finances, using the theory of “human capital contracts.” In other words, your lender provides funds based on your future earning power, rather than your current financial status.

It works like this: you convince the lender to invest in you by showing potential and initiative. After graduation, the lender collects a return on investment, typically 4-8% of your salary for a period of 120 months (10 years). The repayment percentage is capped in your contract, so you don’t have to worry about costs growing unpredictably. If you are unemployed, you don’t have to make payments until you find a job. If you are underemployed, your payments are reduced accordingly. To ensure participants’ success, investors like Lumni and Enzi offer career coaching and employment resources.

What we like about this approach is that companies who invest in human capital will take steps to protect their investments, and that will be good for everyone. A “pay-when-you-get-a-job” and a “pay-more-if-you-get-a-better-job” student loan system will incentivize lenders to work with lawmakers, educators, and future employers to make sure every graduate gets a great education and a good job. Shifting the lender’s focus away from locking borrowers into outsized life-long debt, and toward strategies to realize greater returns on “human capital” investments by making sure graduates get jobs, will bring immediate and lasting change for the better.

“The new mantra is, ‘do I really need this?’”
- Lynda Resnick, Owner, POM Wonderful, FIJI Water and Teleflora

“What we’ve experienced is customers marching down the demand curve toward much more value-oriented purchases.”
- Gary Loveman, Chairman, CEO and President, Harrah’s Entertainment Inc.

“It started after 9/11 with the whole staycation trend. People are doing things as families. They are still consuming, but they are consuming differently. Crock pots, food savers, anything that has a value proposition where people see the return for themselves.”
- Martin Franklin, Chairman and CEO, Jarden Corp.

“My bottom line is that the American consumer is toast.”
- Steven Roach, Chairman, Morgan Stanley Asia

These are my favorite quotes from a Milken Institute panel discussion on the mindset of the frugal consumer. This discussion took place over a year ago, but not much has changed. One of the most interesting aspects of the discussion was the speculation around whether our value-oriented frugal behavior will last if the economy improves. The panelists don’t think it will. What do you think?

It’s appropriate that Memorial Day comes only a few weeks after Mother’s Day because war veterans and mothers have a lot in common. Childbirth and the battlefield are bloody, painful, dangerous, stressful, life-altering experiences. But for their suffering, vets get the honor guard, parades, statues, monuments, and several national holidays, while mothers get a once-a-year reprieve from household chores (if they are lucky) and a basket of flowers. Don’t get me wrong, vets deserve the credit, but it seems somehow off balance the amount of respect we pay to wars and killing, and the short shrift we give to the work of birthing new people and raising them to adulthood.

Each year hundreds of thousands of women die from childbirth or pregnancy-related causes. That number has been decreasing worldwide, in part because of efforts initiated by the United Nations Millenium Development Goal #5: Improve maternal health. However, according to Amnesty International, maternal mortality is rising in the United States. The Maternal Health Accountability Act of 2011, currently before Congress, would mandate reporting and research initiatives around this issue. Unfortunately, the bill only funds information-gathering, not actual programs, but it’s a start. You can support the bill by going to momsrising.org or opencongress.org to let your representative know that fighting maternal mortality is important to you. Get involved with the global fight by contributing to organizations that are working to make pregnancy and childbirth safer for women and newborns around the world. Organizations like: the White Ribbon Alliance, Every Mother Counts, Amnesty International, Unicef, Women Deliver, and many others.

Like soldiers, mothers need moral and material support for the work they do. As Memorial Day approaches, let’s talk about honoring women who have died in their battle to bring new life into the world, and let’s look for ways to reduce those casualties in the years to come.

I’ve been fantasizing about eliminating garbage from my life ever since I read Colin Beaven’s, “No Impact Man.” Beaven convinced his family to alter their lifestyle in order to reduce (or neutralize) their impact on the environment. His first step was to stop generating garbage. Reading about his project intensified my longing for the uncluttered, unlittered life, and gave me some ideas on how to get started with my own no impact project. For me, step one was to buy my milk in recyclable glass bottles from a local farm. Step two is composting.

According to the EPA, 25% of what we put in our landfills is organic waste that could be composted and turned back into soil. If everyone used a composer one quarter of our garbage would literally, go away. To be more accurate, it would turn into a clean substitute for costly, polluting fertilizers. The beautiful thing about composting, is that it turns waste into something useful, something fertile and creative.

I’m figuring out how to do this with lots of help from websites like journey to forever, a site that advocates sustainable farming, and with videos like the one below, from clean air gardening.

Recipe for Healthy Compost
75% carbon (brown)
25% nitrogen (green)
Water
Air

Carbon items (75%)
Fireplace ashes
Leaves
Pine needles
Cardboard (shredded)
Dryer lint or vacume cleaner lint
Cotton or wool rags
Nut shells

Nitrogen Items (25%)
Table scraps
Fruits and vegetables
Coffee grounds (and filters)
Tea leaves (and tea bags)
Garden plants or house plants
Yard trimmings or grass clippings

Neutral Items
Eggshells

Do NOT Put the Following Items in Compost Bin
Anything that comes from an animal: meat, fish, animal fat, bones, dairy – these foods putrefy and attract flies and vermin.
Salty foods – salt can kill microrganisms essential to the composting process
Dog or cat poop – too stinky for suburban composting, and could introduce diseases.
Black walnut tree leaves or twigs – Releases substances harmful to plants
Coal or charcoal ash – Might contain substances harmful to plants
Diseased or insect-ridden plants – Diseases or insects might survive and be transferred back to other plants

My efforts to wean my family off the earn-and-spend treadmill hit an ideological snag a few weeks ago when my seven-year-old son became obsessed with Monopoly. We were in the bookstore with a Christmas gift card to spend when the game was spotted. He’d never played it, never even seen it, but the attraction was instant and he begged me to buy it. I rationalized that it would help him improve his math skills, and I figured he would tire of it quickly and we could put it in the closet with the rest of the board games, so I wasn’t prepared for what happened. He won the first game and his inner tycoon, last seen in August when he obsessed over how to drive more business to his lemonade stand, completely took over. On the weekends, if he couldn’t talk us into playing with him, he played by himself for hours, memorizing rent amounts, building custom hotels out of legos, and learning multiplication so that he could calculate fees for utilities.

Over the last month, I’ve spent many evenings and weekends in marathon Monopoly games and it’s given me some food for thought. The game lays bare the mechanisms (and the huge downside) of capitalism itself. You win by bankrupting your fellow players. It starts with a land grab, and ends with strategic investments designed to drive your competitors out of business. You have to be ruthless to win. No feeling sorry for the player who is glumly selling his house, mortgaging his property, and handing over his very last dollar. The winner is the one who literally takes all.

Interestingly, the earliest ancestor of Monopoly was a game called “The Landlord’s Game” designed by Elizabeth J. Phillips, a Quaker woman who wanted to illustrate how unfair economic conditions made a few people rich at the expense of everyone else. Elizabeth’s game was revised and self-published by Charles Darrow, who later sold it to Parker Brothers. Ironically, Lizzie Phillips’ game-style critique of the property tax system evolved into a celebration of capitalism that is so brazen it is still banned in North Korea and Cuba.

So what am I going to do about my kid’s Monopoly fixation? For now, I’m going to let it play out. There have been improvements in his math skills, and the game is establishing a good baseline to help him understand the sub-prime mortgage crisis, and other Great Recession issues that he wouldn’t have been able to approach without the hands-on experience Monopoly is giving him. I’m trying to sneak in lessons on how runaway greed destroys people, but to really internalize this, he might need an anti-monopoly game that shows him a different way to win. Hmmm, I have some ideas about that. Maybe I’ll get out the magic markers and design a new version of the game, reinventing Monopoly for the anti-consumer. Stay tuned.

Our thanks to Ad-Free blog for the artwork.

It’s going to be an interesting day, spent focused on the little (or big) things I can do to make the world a better, or at least more generous, place. I borrowed three of Sasha’s suggestions and added nine of my own to the list below. Here are my Generosity Day plans:

1. Give money to every street musician, or homeless person who asks
2. Leave big tips
3. Donate books I’m done reading to the library
4. Give gently used clothes to goodwill
5. Smile at people
6. Give patient and thoughtful responses to even the most exasperating questions
7. Give respect to everyone (even the rude or disrespectful)
8. Volunteer for an event posted on One Brick
9. Go to the United Way site and find a volunteer opportunity for the whole family
10. Make friends with a stranger
11. Try not to shove or push on the subway, OR give dirty looks when someone shoves me
12. Treat self (and husband) to a delicious cup of City Bakery hot chocolate

Kim’s Secret Ingredient Lentil Soup
1 large onion
2 cloves of garlic
1/4 cup butter or olive oil
8 cups chicken broth (or vegetable broth)
16 (or 14) oz. bag of dry lentils
1 chopped tomato (or 1/2 cup of tomato sauce)
1 1/2 cup cooked chopped spinach (or one package of frozen spinach)
2 cups of carrots (cut in thick rounds)
1/2 tsp salt
secret ingredient: 1 tbsp garam masala

Chop one large onion and mince two cloves of garlic. Heat oil or butter in an 8 quart stock pot. Saute onions and garlic until onions are soft and semi-translucent. Add 8 cups of chicken broth (substitute vegetable broth if you are vegetarian). Rinse lentils under cold water, drain, and add them to the pot. Add carrots and tomato and bring to a boil. Add salt, and the secret ingredient, one tablespoon of garam masala. If you can’t find garam masala in your grocery store, substitute a teaspoon of cinnamon, half teaspoon of coriander, and a pinch of pepper.

Cover and simmer for 50 minutes. Add spinach and cook another 10 minutes. Serve topped with shredded cheese and an assortment of crackers for dipping.