return of the car

after a few years of car freedom, i have reluctantly joined the car-owning public again. with the exception of a couple of trips to west virginia, i've used foot, bike, buses, and trains for my own use, but since glenn stopped driving, i've driven his car to take him on trips and to his appointments. unfortunately, his car was reaching the end of its life, required repairs that cost more than the car was worth, and needed to be replaced before winter.

i tried to think creatively of ways we could get around owning a car, but glenn is increasingly feeble and afraid of the unknown. there's no way he's going to sit in a wheelchair in the rain with me, waiting for the bus. a car is an unpleasant default, but i fell back to it as the best solution i could find. as long as we're in glenn's home of 40 years (where he feels safest and soundest), we're creatures of suburbia, with all the limitations such creatures suffer.

my original idea was to buy a car for glenn as a gift, but, at the risk of sounding morbid, it occurred to me that if something were to happen to glenn tomorrow, i don't want to be wrangling with his estate to try to retrieve my investment. i decided to buy one in my own name and go on using it for chauffeuring glenn and public transit for moving myself.

i wanted to find a reliable car that would get reasonable mpg, would be easy for glenn to get in and out of, would be easy for me to put the wheelchair in and out of, and could hold the wheelchair, glenn's walker, and a couple of bags when we travel somewhere.

i settled on a pontiac vibe, which is actually a toyota matrix, only slightly less goofy-looking. it's an odd coalition in which toyota builds the car and gm sticks different sheetmetal on it. it reminds me of some factories that friends showed me south of tucson. they said that products were brought to them from mexico, fully assembled except for the tightening of a couple of screws. workers in the factory would do that last bit of work and slap on a "made in the u.s.a." label.

in this case, you get the reliability of a toyota engine and drivetrain, pay a little less because it doesn't have a toyota logo on the grill, and can pretend you "bought american" if you like. i found this one at carmax. it had been a leased car and was returned to the lease holder after less than a year, with 2,700 miles on it.

i must admit to a sleepless night after the purchase and feeling a little sick at having my money tied up in this hunk of steel and glass. here's hoping that it works out as well as it seems it will and that i get a reasonable amount back if i'm ever able to sell it and draw my money out again.

i've put photos here.

house no more

i see it's been 19 months since i had anything to say here, and really nothing to say even then. there's been nothing to report, i've just been working along, saving along, investing along. i did move into greenblattized value investing, but you have to make up your own mind as to whether you're one of the faithful there.

i have news this month, though. i sat down at settlement thursday and signed my house over to new owners. it's now the first home of a young couple starting out together.

from time to time, i've updated the spreadsheet i made after my last look at what the house had cost. i was able today to update it with final sums and take a view of how the house turned out as an investment.

the quick and superficial story is that i bought it for $108,000 and sold for $225,000, making a 108% return on investment, or about 18%/year. better than stuffing it in a mattress any day.

as i said before, though, i don't think that gives a realistic picture of what happened. i sat around today making up different formulas to reach a more meaningful number, and decided the simplest way is to look at it like a big savings account. over the years, i put x into the account, and when i closed it, i took y out.

this gives me two numbers:

input: $198,865.

this is the $108,000 to pay off the original house cost, plus mortgage interest, settlement fees, realtor's commissions, property taxes, home improvements and repairs, homeowner's insurance, etc. all the money that came out of my pocket (or out of the sale price at the end) and into the property.

output: $282,349.10.

the sale price plus tax savings and rent i collected. $24,000 of this is rent i didn't have to pay for the two years i lived there, estimated at $1,000/month for a similar house or apartment. i decided to include this as money saved through the investment, so subtract $24k if you think it bogus.

the result is a $282,349.10 withdrawal from $198,865 of deposits, or a 42% return. instead of 18%, it was an average of a 7% climb a year.^[4] better than i would have found in a deposit account, less than i would have hoped for from stocks and bonds. whether i should have just rented, made regular investments, and avoided the past year's aggravation is something i'll have to ponder.

in the meantime, many, many thanks to my realtors for all their advice and to all the contractors who made the house presentable and pleasing to the buyers. i hope they have happy years in it and that the market is as favorable to you if you sell soon, too.